


The Summer of Our Discontent

by eternaleponine



Series: Where There Is A Flame [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Costia's Death, Angst, Anya's POV, Backstory, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Homophobia, Parenting Done Badly, Prequel, So much angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-08
Updated: 2016-09-13
Packaged: 2018-08-13 23:16:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 35,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7989823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternaleponine/pseuds/eternaleponine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/5474192/chapters/12650540">Where There Is A Flame</a>.</p><p>This takes place during the summer before the main story starts, immediately following Costia's death, and is told from Anya's POV.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It took a minute for Anya to even figure out what the noise was that had jerked her out of sleep, and even longer for her to realize that she actually needed to do something about it. She peered at the screen of her phone, too bright in the darkness of her room, and noticed the name first ( _What the hell is Lexa doing calling me?_ ) and then the time ( _What the **fuck** is Lexa doing calling me at 3:26 in the **fucking** morning?!_ ). 

Lexa _knew_ that Anya was a morning person. She knew that she frequently got more done before noon than most people did in an entire day... in no small part because she was out and about while most people were still sipping their morning coffee and squinting at the newspaper, trying to make the tiny print come into focus. (Okay, that part was a lie. Who read an actual newspaper anymore? You could get everything online, probably cheaper and without having ink smudged all over your fingers.) She knew that, knew that she would be waking up (no alarm needed) in a couple of hours...

... which meant that there had to be a really good reason. 

Or a really bad one.

She swiped her finger across the screen and pressed the phone to her ear. "Hello?" Her voice was a croak, and she cleared her throat and tried again. "Lexa?"

"I need a favor."

Anya pushed herself to sitting, shoving her hair out of her face. Whatever was going on, it wasn't good. Lexa never asked anyone for help with anything, for one, and for another... there was something in her voice. Something... tight. Anxious. Something that immediately put Anya on edge. 

"What do you need?"

"They're taking her. They won't let me see her, and they're taking her, and they're lying."

"Who?" Anya asked. "Who is 'they', Lexa? Who is 'her'?" She pinched the bridge of her nose at the terrible grammar, but it couldn't be helped. 

"Her parents," Lexa said. "They said—" She stopped, and Anya could hear her breathing on the end, or struggling for breath. "They said there was an accident. They said... They're lying. They have to be."

"Whose parents?" Anya demanded. "Lexa, you're not making any sense."

"I know," Lexa said, and maybe she did, but it didn't take the frantic edge out of her voice. "I know. None of this makes sense. None of it."

And now she sounded like she was going to cry, and Lexa never cried. Lexa never showed any emotion to anyone if she could help it... except her girlfriend. Where she was concerned, Lexa was pretty much an open book, no matter how hard she tried. She. Her. "Costia?"

"She came to visit. I told her not to, but she did anyway, and we fought, and she went out without me, and now they're saying... they're saying... they're..." 

"Breathe, Lexa. Come on. Take a deep breath." She waited until she heard Lexa do it. "Let it out. Just breathe. In and out, nice and slow."

When she thought maybe Lexa would be calm enough to continue, she asked, as gently as she could, "Who is saying? Costia's parents?"

"They won't talk to me," Lexa said. "It was the police. They told me."

_Oh fuck._ This was worse than she thought, worse than she feared. This wasn't Lexa somehow overreacting to something if the police were involved. This wasn't just a lover's quarrel, or parental intervention in a relationship they didn't approve of. This was serious. This was...

"What did they tell you?" Anya asked. 

"There was an accident," Lexa said. "She was... she was hit. By a car. She was hit by a car, and she was hurt. They said... they-they-they..."

"Breathe," Anya reminded her, wishing suddenly that she had a magic wand or a TARDIS or something that could get her from where she was to where Lexa was, so that she could do this face-to-face. Where she could see her, touch her, hold her even though they weren't really that kind of friends... in the face of this thing that she didn't really need Lexa to say to know... "It's oka—"

"It's _not_ okay!" The words were almost a shout, and Anya held her phone away from her ear for a few seconds to make sure that she was done. 

"Wrong choice of words," Anya said. "What do you need me to do?"

"They won't let me see her," Lexa said. "They're going to take her, and they won't let me see her. They're _lying_ and they won't let me _see_ her."

"I'm sorry, Lexa." She didn't know what else to say. She didn't want to be getting irritated, but having to ask the same question over and over again and never getting any kind of real answer (which in this situation was pretty much an answer in and of itself, but she wasn't sure she was ready to stomach it any more than Lexa was) at 3 whatever it was in the morning was frustrating, to say the least. "Tell me what you need me to do."

Silence. Silence deep and profound to the point that Anya pulled her phone away from her ear and checked to make sure that the line hadn't disconnected. It hadn't, and finally she heard a rustle, and the sound of breathing again. "Lexa?"

"Yeah."

"Tell me what you need me to do. Do you need me to come there? Because I will be on the next plane if that's what you need." It wouldn't be cheap, but she would figure it out. It was important – _she_ was important enough that Anya would dip into her savings to make it happen, even though she knew she was going to need that money come next year.

"No," Lexa said. "No, that won't help. By the time you get here, they'll have already taken her, probably."

"Okay," Anya said. "Then what?" Silence again, and she wanted to scream. How the hell was she supposed to help if Lexa wouldn't – or couldn't – tell her what she needed? 

"Go... there" Lexa said finally. "They're going to take her home, so you need to go there and..." Inhale, exhale, and Anya's chest ached with the obvious effort behind it. "You need to go there and see her. They won't let me see her, but maybe they'll let you see her. Just say... don't mention me. If they think you're connected to me, they won't let you anywhere near her. So just say that you know her from school and you want to see her, to check on her, and then just tell me... tell me she's okay. I understand if she hates me, if she never wants to see me again. That's... I can live with that. I can deal with that. If it's over, it's over. I just need to know that she's okay."

_She's not,_ Anya wanted to say. _She's not okay, Lexa, because if she was okay..._ She rolled her shoulders, trying to ease the tension. If there had been an accident, but Costia was okay, it's unlikely the police would be reaching out to Lexa (and _why_ had they reached out to her at all? Unless Costia had Lexa in her phone as her emergency contact?), and also unlikely that Costia's parents would be called. Legally, she was an adult. If Costia was badly injured, but expected to live, her parents might be able to block Lexa from seeing her at the hospital (if she was in ICU, anywhere else it would be Costia's decision, because again, adult) but she wouldn't be stable enough to transport. Which left only one option.

"If— _when_ you see her, tell her I’m sorry," Lexa said. "When you see her, tell her I love her."

"I'll need the address," Anya said, knowing that this was a bad idea, that this was a mistake, but maybe... maybe somehow she was wrong. Maybe there was some option that left Costia alive and injured but not so badly so that she couldn't be moved to another hospital closer to home. Maybe... 

Lexa rattled it off to her, and Anya scrambled for a pen in the dark. She got it written down and stared at the piece of paper that rattled in her shaking hand. "Is it okay if I leave in the morning?" she asked. "It's going to take them a little while to get home, right?"

"It's okay," Lexa said. 

"What about you?" Anya asked. "Are you going to be okay for the night?"

"I'll be better when I know she's okay," Lexa said. "But... thank you for doing this. I'm sorry that I woke you up in the middle of the night. I... I didn't know who else to call."

Anya closed her eyes, took a moment to just breathe so that her voice wouldn't shake. "It's okay," she said. "I'm glad you called. If you need _anything_ , you call me, okay? I'll pick up. No matter where I am or what time it is, I will pick up."

"Thank you."

"Try to get some sleep," Anya said. "Or if you can't sleep, at least lay down and close your eyes. Even that can help." Which was probably the best that she could hope for for herself at this point, but if she was going to be driving all day (because it would be cheaper to drive than to fly to where Costia lived) she needed to at least try to grab a few more minutes. 

"I'll try," Lexa said. "Thank you. Again."

"That's what friends are for," Anya said. "I'll talk to you soon, okay?"

"Okay." 

Lexa didn't hang up, but she didn't say anything, either, so finally Anya just disconnected the call. If Lexa really needed her, she could call back again. Whether she _would_ or not, Anya didn't know, but she'd put the offer out there, and it was the best she could do. 

She managed to get to sleep, but not deeply and not for long. When she woke up again and started packing a bag, there was part of her that was tempted to just go to the airport and get herself a ticket that would take her to Lexa, foregoing this whole doomed road trip to Costia's hometown to try to... what? Why would Lexa believe her any more than she believed the police about what had happened to her girlfriend? There was no point in going to tell Costia anything, because Costia wasn't going to be there to tell. 

Costia was dead.

That bright, opinionated, driven, stubborn, compassionate young woman who had brought out the best Lexa (and sometimes the worst) was gone, and she wasn't coming back, and shouldn't her responsibility be to the living?

But she was doing what Lexa had asked. If her responsibility was to Lexa, then going against her wishes wasn't going to be helpful. Better to just do it and get it over with, and report back, and deal with the fallout. 

So she called home to let her moms know what was going on, more because she wanted to talk to them than because they actually needed to know; she didn't live with them anymore, and she hadn't been planning on visiting home in the next few days or even weeks, so this trip wasn't disrupting any plans. She just... needed to hear their voices, she guessed. Needed reassurance that she was doing the right thing, which they gave even if maybe they didn't 100% believe it. 

"Good luck," they said. 

"Thanks," she said. She was going to need it.

The drive was long and boring, and she was tempted to call Lexa to check on her, but decided that she might just make things worse, and that was the last thing that she wanted to do. She would wait until Lexa reached out, or until she had some answers for her, whichever came first. At the very least, she would wait until she had arrived, and could let her know that Costia's parents weren't back yet or whatever.

She drove past Costia's house, but there were no cars in the driveway. She didn't want take a chance on a nosy neighbor reporting back to the Walkers that they'd seen some girl snooping around, peering into their garage, and there was no answer when she rang the bell, so she found a motel that wasn't too sketchy and got a room. She would try again in the morning.

She texted Lexa to let her know that she was there, but that Costia's family wasn't back yet, and got a response back a few seconds later that just said thank you. She didn't try to force any further conversation, because she was exhausted and tomorrow was going to be a long (pretty much guaranteed, whether it was long because she would just be waiting around, or because she had to deal with grieving parents and trying to convince them that their daughter's girlfriend wasn't Satan incarnate or whatever bullshit they believed) so she just switched on the TV and passed out.

In the morning she went for a jog, hoping that the familiar routine would clear her mind even in unfamiliar surroundings. It worked, sort of, but it was pretty much impossible to shake thoughts of what she was going to say to Lexa when she had to tell her that no, really, no one was lying to her, and the person she loved more than anything or anyone in the world was gone and not coming back. 

And she might have to keep saying it, over and over again, until Lexa finally believed it. They said the first stage of grief was denial, right? She'd had to take a several hour long seminar about it when she was getting her training to be an RA, in case any of the people on her floor experienced a loss and needed help when there wasn't an actual trained professional around. She'd hoped that she would never have cause to use the information she'd been given.

After a shower and a trip to a diner to get something for breakfast, she headed back over to the Walkers' house, but there was still nothing and no one, and she really hoped that this was one of the neighborhoods where people minded their own business because otherwise they might get suspicious really fast if she kept coming around. 

The day dragged on into evening, and Anya was really starting to wonder what she was supposed to do if they didn't come back in the next day or two. What if Lexa was wrong? What if Costia was just stuck in a hospital right now, and her parents had just been talking about taking her home when she was stable?

She was ready to give up when she drove past and saw that there was a car in the driveway. The sun was setting, which meant it was already pretty late, and it was likely that they'd had a long day. It was probably better to wait until morning... but what if in the morning they were gone again? Hell, she didn't even know if it was their car.

There was only one way to find out. She pulled into the driveway and parked, taking a minute to compose herself before getting out and heading for the front door. She thought she saw the curtains twitch even before she got there, but maybe she'd just imagined it. She rang the bell.

The door opened a minute later, and a man looked out. "Can I help you?"

"Sir, I—" She what? She hadn't actually thought about what she as going to say, and now here she was, and she was sure that she only had a few seconds before the door was shut in her face. "I heard about the accident," she said. 

"What accident?" he asked, which threw her for a loop. Was it actually possible that it was all a lie? But they couldn't have gotten the police in on it, could they? And this man didn't look confused. He looked wary, suspicious, and yes, the door was already closing. "Now really isn't a good time."

"I understand, sir," she said. "I just... I knew your daughter at school, and I heard—"

"Who are you?" he asked, his eyes narrowing, and the gap between the door and its frame narrowing with them. 

"My name is Anya. Like I said, I knew Costia—"

He flinched at the name. "Like _I_ said, now really isn't—"

"Lexa," she said, which was exactly what she wasn't supposed to say, and this was all going wrong, but what the hell was she supposed to do? "Lexa sent me. Please."

The door closed. She rang the bell again, but there was no answer. She thought about ringing it a third time, ringing it until they opened the door again, because she had to do this. She had to get answers. Lexa needed answers, or needed confirmation that what she'd been told was true, and she'd sent Anya to get them and she couldn't let her down. 

Instead she got back in her car and left. She would try again in the morning.

But in the morning, they didn't answer the door, and in the afternoon, they didn't answer the door, and she knew she was walking a very fine line between persistence and harassment, and maybe it was time to cut her losses and go home, because this wasn't getting her anywhere, and every time she had to call Lexa and tell her she still hadn't seen Costia...

She went to the diner near her hotel. She was getting really sick of eating out, but she didn't have any other choice. A group of teenage girls was seated at the booth behind her, which left her in a perfect position to overhear what they were saying.

"I can't believe it," one of them said. "I just... I can't believe it. It's so wrong."

"I know, right?" another one said. "How can you be dead before you're even able to drink?"

A long silence, and then, "I feel so bad for her parents. Can you imagine having to call all of your kid's friends to tell them?" 

Silence again. 

"Are you going to go to the funeral?" the first one asked. "I know that I should, but I just..."

"You have to go. You _have_ to. It will suck, but she was one of our best friends."

"Do you think _she_ will be there?"

"Who?"

"What do you mean, who? Lexa! Costia's girlfriend?"

"Oh. I guess I thought that was just a thing she was doing – no pun intended – to piss off her parents, and as soon as she left and found out how much better college guys are than high school guys, she would get over it."

Anya twitched. She wanted to turn around and slap them, or at least the one who had basically just called Lexa a thing. These were Costia's best friends? Had they been this horrible to Lexa's face, or only behind her back?

"Don't be a bitch. Costia was happier with Lexa than she ever was with Matt, and you know it."

_Okay, you can stay,_ Anya thought. 

"I don't know why. Lexa was always so... snobby."

"I'm pretty sure she was happier with Lexa because Lexa just did whatever Costia told her to do," the third one, the quietest one, said. "Matt wasn't like that. He actually had a mind of his own."

"Why are we even talking about this?"

"I wanted to know if Lexa was going to be there."

"Why does it even matter?"

"I was just thinking how if she showed up, it was going to get really ugly, considering that it's probably kind of her fault that Costia's dead." That was the first one, the bitchy one, again, and if she said one more thing, Anya wasn't sure she would be able to keep quiet any longer.

"It was a car accident!" the second one, the rational one, said. "She got hit by a car!"

"But she asked Costia to go see her, and then _this_ happens. Like... there's something wrong with this picture."

Anya couldn't take it anymore. She stood up and turned to face them, and their chatter stopped as soon as she planted her feet at the end of their booth. "You're talking about Costia Walker, right? And Lexa Woods?"

"Who the hell are you?" one of them asked.

"I'm one of their friends from college," Anya said. She wanted to tear into them, to tell them that Lexa wasn't at fault and that they needed to shut their mouths, but the fact was, she didn't even really know what had happened. She only had what she'd been able to piece together. 

"Oh. So you're here for the funeral?"

Anya nodded, taking the path of least resistance. "Yes," she said. "I'm here for the funeral." 

"Is _she_ here?" the quiet one asked.

"No," Anya said. "They – Costia's parents – wouldn't even let her see her after the accident."

"She wasn't with her?" This was from the rational one.

"No," Anya said. "She heard about it from the police."

"Oh shit." The rational one shook her head. "Do you want to sit down?"

_Not really,_ Anya thought, but she sat anyway. She had to get answers somehow, and this seemed a much more likely source than Costia's parents at this point. "She called me the night it happened, asked me to come and see... if there was anything I could do."

"So she's not coming?"

"I don't know," Anya said. "I'm not sure." _I'm not sure she's up to it. I'm not sure it won't break her. I'm not sure they'll let her._ But she _was_ sure that if she didn't come, if she wasn't there, it would only make things worse in the long run. So she had to come. Somehow, Anya had to find a way for her to be there, so that she might finally accept it. It wouldn't be easy, but Anya would be there to help her through it. 

After that, though, there wasn't anything really left to say, so Anya got back up again and went back to her table. She ended up just having it packed up to go, having completely lost her appetite. Back in her hotel, she called Lexa.

"Hello?"

"Hey," Anya said. "Lex—"

"Did you see her?"

Anya suppressed a sigh. "No. I didn't see her."

"They're not letting you? You never—they don't even know you. Why would they—"

"Lexa, stop," Anya said. "Please. Stop."

Lexa stopped.

"They won't let me see her because there's nothing to see. She's gone, Lexa. Her funeral—"

"No." 

"Yes, Lexa. Costia—"

"Don't you dare say her name!" 

_Fuck._ "Lexa, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"They're lying to you," Lexa said. "They figured out that I sent you and—"

"She's dead," Anya said. "That's the truth."

"No."

"Yes."

"No!"

"Lexa—"

But the line went dead. She'd hung up. Anya sighed. This was so far above her paygrade. She was in over her head and barely treading water. She didn't know what to do. 

Then she remembered that she still had the files from when she was an RA on her laptop. She probably wasn't supposed to, and she would delete them right after... but having those files meant that she had Lexa's emergency contact information, which meant that she could call her father.

He picked up on the first ring. "Woods." No greeting, just his name, like he expected it to be something job-related, but then maybe he didn't get a lot of personal calls. 

"Sir, this is Anya Colville. I was Lexa's RA. The other night she called me and told me—"

"Yes," he said, without even letting her finish. "How can I help you?"

"You may want to start looking into last minute flights," she said. "Costia's funeral—"

"There won't be any need for that," he said. "I've already received a call from Mr. Walker, and he made it clear that Lexa would not be welcome at the funeral, and if she tried to show up, she would be removed by whatever means necessary."

"Shit." She hadn't meant to say it out loud. "I didn't realize. She... I just walked to Lexa and she doesn't – she didn't know –"

"She didn't know what?" he asked.

"She didn't know Costia was dead. She still thought... she wanted me to come here to see how she was. She thought that they were lying to her."

He sighed loud enough that she could hear it. "She doesn't want to know," he said. "I'll talk to her."

"I'll talk to the Walkers," Anya said. "I'll try to make them understand how important it is that Lexa gets some kind of closure."

"Good luck with that," he said.

"Good luck with her," Anya echoed.

She hung up the phone, staring at the screen for so long it went black. She needed to get up. She needed to get back in her car and go to the Walkers' house and convince them, somehow, that this wasn't only about them. That as much as they didn't like Lexa, as much as they didn't approve of the choices that their daughter had made, Costia had loved Lexa, and Lexa loved Costia, and she needed to be there. She needed to see with her own eyes that the girl she had loved with all that she was... wasn't. 

_Or,_ she thought, _you could just get in your car and drive home. You could just call Lexa's father back and tell him that they'd said no, absolutely not, under no circumstances, and you were sorry but you'd tried, you'd done all you could do, and he was just going to have to figure out how to help Lexa through it._

Except everything that Lexa had told her about him (which granted wasn't a whole hell of a lot) pointed to the fact that he wouldn't. That he would just leave her to figure it out on her own, to pick up her own pieces and glue them back together, but how can you apply pressure until the glue dries when every part of you is shattered?

_Fuck._

_The things I do for you, Lexa..._

She forced herself up, out the door, to the car. She was already starting to learn this place, to figure out which roads connected where, and how to correct if she took a wrong turn. She didn't like it. She didn't want to be familiar with this place, this town where Lexa had once lived and where there was a ghost around every corner that she couldn't see but knew was there, because Lexa had told her stories...

This time when she rang the bell, the door opened almost immediately, framing a small woman with wild hair and puffy, red-rimmed eyes. She looked Anya up and down, her forehead furrowing. "This really isn't a good time," she said. "Whatever petition or—"

Anya bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. It wasn't funny, except it kind of was, because yeah, it was probably the most logical conclusion to come to when a random college-age student turns up on your doorstep. "No petition," she said, except that wasn't exactly true, because she _had_ come to petition them, but more in the medieval sense where people came before the king to ask for aid or favors, not because she wanted to save the trees or children or the animals or whatever the cause of the week was. "I came to offer my condolences."

"Oh." The woman stepped aside. "Come in."

Anya stepped inside, her eyes sweeping the wide rooms, all open-concept and natural light, in whites and neutrals, and a place like this wasn't meant to hold so much grief, but it rolled off of Mrs. Walker in waves, eddied across the floor and rose like steam to the ceiling, filling up every available space until Anya thought she might choke on it.

"Thank you," she said, when she was offered a seat. "Mrs. Walker, I can't even imagine... I'm so sorry for your loss."

"Can I get you something? Coffee? Tea?"

"Water's fine," Anya said. "Thank you."

Mrs. Walker went into the kitchen and came back with a glass of water and a plate of cookies. "People just keep... bringing things," she said, setting them down. "All of... all of her favorites. They mean well."

Anya thought it seemed pretty fucking cruel, to serve up plates of reminders to people who would never forget no matter what. Like offering a bowl full of grenades or something, a roasting pan of landmines. She picked one up and took a bite to be polite. "I knew Costia from school," she said. "College. A friend of a friend, but we got to know each other pretty well."

Mrs. Walker nodded, wearing a tight, tired smile. "She had so many friends," she said. "Everywhere she went, she would just latch on to people. She would decide they were going to be friends, and she wouldn't take no for an answer."

Anya smiled back. "Pretty much, yeah," she said. "She was easy to like." Not exactly a lie, but not exactly the truth, either. She was easy to like on the surface, but when you dug deeper and started to get beyond it, if there was something you didn't agree with her on, things could get fraught pretty quickly. Anya was pretty sure that the only person who had ever changed Costia's mind about anything was Lexa, and even that wasn't often. 

A better answer would have been, 'She was hard to resist.' Anya wondered if Mrs. Walker knew that the situation that she'd described, of Costia latching on to people and refusing to let go, was what had happened with Lexa. She wondered if she knew that it had been Costia who had initiated, Costia who had pursued, Costia who had refused every attempt Lexa had made to keep her at arm's length. Because she'd tried, or at least she said she did, and what reason did she have to lie about it, especially to Anya, who had no horse in that race and only came in after it was a done deal anyway? Did Mrs. Walker know that Costia had gone to see Lexa against Lexa's wishes? Did she know that she'd told her not to come, and she'd come anyway? 

Anya sipped her water. "Have you... notified her friends from school?" she asked. 

"I've tried to," Mrs. Walker said. "It's... it's hard. A lot of them say that they'll tell others. I assume that's how you heard?"

"Yes," Anya said. "I heard from someone else." She took another sip of water, cleared her throat. "I heard from Lexa."

Mrs. Walker's face instantly changed, and for a second Anya thought she was going to reach out and slap the glass of water from her hand, or maybe skip the glass and attack her directly, and she braced for it, trying to figure out how to defend herself with as little force as possible. She didn't want to hurt this woman, half out of her mind with grief, but she wasn't about to let her claw her eyes out, either. 

Anya set down the water and held up her hands. "Please," she said. "Just give me a minute. Just hear me out."

"I don't want to hear anything about that, that, that—"

"Lexa is my friend," Anya said, her voice low and cold. "Whatever you're thinking about calling her, don't. I'm only here because I heard that you'd told her father that she wasn't welcome at the funeral, and I just... I think you're making a mistake. I understand that you didn't like her. I understand that you think that she corrupted your daughter, that she changed her in ways that she wouldn't have otherwise changed. I'm not... I don't care about changing your mind, because I know that I can't. If over a year of your daughter telling you that this girl mattered to her, that she loved her, that Lexa loved her back... if that's not enough, nothing ever will be, I'm sure."

The tendons on the sides of Mrs. Walker's neck bulged as her jaw clenched, but Anya just kept going while she still had the advantage, while Mrs. Walker was still figuring out what to say. "I only ever knew them together. I only ever really saw them with each other. And they were happy. They loved each other. Whatever form that took – if they had just been friends, if Lexa was only Costia's friend – would you let her come? Because I fail to see the difference. I really do. She loved her, and she needs closure. She needs the chance to say goodbye. I'll be there with her. I'll make sure that she—"

"She should have thought of that before she got my daughter killed," Mrs. Walker snarled. "If I see that sick little bitch's face anywhere near the funeral, the _best_ she can hope for is that I'll call the police. Get out."

Anya left. There was no arguing, no reasoning, nothing she could say or do that would change her mind, and she wasn't about to make the situation worse. She got in her car and sat there, her hands shaking as she dialed the phone. Lexa's father didn't answer, so she just left him a message saying that she'd tried to talk to the Walkers, and that it was a no go. She asked him to take care of Lexa, and told him to call her if there was anything that she could do to help.

She stared at her screen for a long time before selecting another name and tapping on it, putting it on speaker because her hands were shaking too badly now to hold the phone. 

"Hello?"

"Hey."

"Hay is for horses," Nat joked, like she did pretty much every time Anya said it, and if she didn't smile, at least her lips twitched. "What's going on?"

"I don't know... I don't know how to do this. How to fix it. I tried, but..." 

"How to do what?"

"How to..." Anya sighed. "Lexa's girlfriend was killed in an accident. She was – is – refusing to believe that she's dead. She sent me to, to see her. To find out what really happened, but just to see her and get back to her and tell her that Costia is okay. But Costia's not okay. Costia's dead, and her parents blame Lexa, and I tried to talk to her mother, just now, tried to tell her that I'll make sure that Lexa doesn't do anything, doesn't say anything, if that's what they want, just so they would let Lexa be there, let her see... let her get some closure. Let her say goodbye. But they won't. Costia's mother called Lexa a 'sick little bitch' and said she would call the police if she showed up."

"Oh honey," Nat said. "That's... rough, to say the least. And cruel on their part, but I guess sort of to be expected among the less evolved of the species."

"It's just _bullshit_ ," Anya said. "Like, for fuck's sake. I get that you lost your daughter. I get that no parent feels like they should ever survive their child. But it was an _accident_. Lexa didn't cause it. It wasn't like she was driving the car that hit Costia, or that she pushed her, or..." She swallowed hard. "You love your daughter. Your daughter loved Lexa. Whether you liked it or not, wouldn't you want to, to honor that somehow? Wouldn't you want to let this girl, this girl that your daughter loved, who loved your daughter, wouldn't you want to let her have the chance to make some kind of _peace_ with that? Funerals aren't about the dead. They're about the living, and... and Lexa has to live with this for the rest of her _life_ , just like they do, and—"

"Breathe," Nat instructed. "Just breathe, Anya."

She did. She took a deep breath in, and let it out slowly. "I'm sorry. I know that there's nothing you can do. I just... I guess I just needed someone to listen."

"You can always call me," Nat said. "You know that." There was a silence, and then, "Something you said just struck me."

"What?"

"I don't want to upset you more," Nat said.

"Not knowing is going to upset me," Anya pointed out.

"Right. You said, 'wouldn't you want to let her make some kind of peace?' And... maybe they don't. Maybe that's exactly the point. Maybe they don't want her to be able to make peace with this. If they really do blame her."

"Shit," Anya said, because Nat was probably right. "Assholes."

"I won't deny that," Nat said. "Are you going to go?"

"Where?"

"To the funeral?"

Anya sighed. She hadn't really thought about it. She'd been so focused on Lexa, on doing what she asked, and when that proved to be impossible, on figuring out a way to make things still work somehow, that she hadn't really considered what she wanted or needed to do for herself. "I hate funerals," she said. 

"I know."

"But if she can't be there... someone should. Someone who knew them. Someone who can stand in Lexa's stead." And that someone would have to be her, because who else was there? Even though Mrs. Walker had said she was trying to notify Costia's college friends, what were the chances that many of them would be able to show up? It was a long trip on short notice, and they were broke college students. But she was here, and she probably knew Lexa better than anyone else they'd met at school... "I have to," she said. "I don't think I have a choice. Except now that they know I'm here because of Lexa, I'm not sure they won't call the cops on _me_."

"If they don't want to turn the funeral into a three-ring circus, they won't," Nat said. "As long as you don't cause a scene, I think you'll be all right. Just go and do what you need to do, for you and for your friend."

"Yeah," Anya agreed. 

"And after... it might be a good idea to go see her. Lexa. Just to make sure that she's... well, as okay as a person can be in this kind of situation."

"I'm not sure I can afford to," Anya said. "I mean, I could, but I'm going to need—"

"Don't worry about it," Nat said. "Put the plane ticket on the emergency credit card. We'll take care of it."

"You don't have to do this," Anya said. "I shouldn't have—"

"This is more important than money," Nat said. "Lexa is your friend, and I'm pretty sure she _needs_ a friend right now."

Anya was pretty sure that she was right. Maybe her father would explain it to her, maybe he would get her to understand that Costia was gone and not coming back... but she had her doubts. From what Lexa had said, and what she'd seen... their relationship wasn't exactly built on a strong foundation of communication. As in she'd seen him helping Lexa move her stuff out of the dorm without either of them saying a single word to each other, and not because they were so in tune they didn't need to talk. 

"Thank you," she said. "I really appreciate it."

"I know what it's like to lose people I care about," Nat said. "And I know what it's like to care about people who've lost people. If you need anything, you tell me, or your mom, or your dad. Don't just bottle it up, Anya, and don't be too proud to reach out if you need someone. Understand?"

"Yes ma'am," Anya said, because Nat was using her officers' voice, probably without realizing it. 

"Good. Let me know how it goes, okay? Keep us posted."

"I will."

"I love you. _We_ love you."

"Love you too." She hung up, feeling better. Calmer, anyway. She wasn't sure she would feel better until she had a chance to actually see Lexa and figure out what kind of shape she was really in. She thought about trying to call Lexa's father again, to find out if he'd talked to Lexa yet, and how it had gone. But she decided she was hungry, and tired, and it could wait until morning.


	2. Chapter 2

Anya called Captain Woods in the morning and got his voicemail. She tried to keep it brief, letting him know that she hadn't been able to convince the Walkers to let Lexa come to the funeral, but that she would be attending in her stead. She hesitated for a moment, then said, "I'd like to come see her after. To make sure she's okay." She left him her number to call back.

She tried to call Lexa, but there was no answer. She told herself it was just the time difference, that it was too early, or maybe she was out running, or in the shower. She left her a message asking her to call when she got a chance.

Her phone chimed with a text message a little while later from Lexa's father: 'Send me the details. I'll make sure someone is there to meet you.' Nothing about how things had gone with Lexa, whether he'd talked to her yet, and if he had, what the result had been. It was none of her business, she guessed, and she would find out soon enough how Lexa was.

The funeral was the next day, and it passed in a blur. The whole thing felt so generic, like the people there hadn't really known Costia at all. But then the whole thing felt like a cliché: smart, pretty girl killed in a car accident, cutting short her promising future. They were all trapped in a Lifetime Movie of the Week or an after school special, and could they really help it if everything they said felt trite?

She stayed in the back, both at the funeral and at the cemetery, and didn't approach the grave until everyone else was gone. She stared down at the pile of dirt that would be seeded (or maybe sodded) over, and eventually she assumed some cold stone monument would mark the spot. Right now it was just a little plastic marker.

"She's lost without you," she said. "You always had to have your own way. She asked you not to come, and you went anyway and now you're gone, and she's lost without you. Now she has to live the rest of her life without you because you couldn't live for a few weeks without her. She _told_ you, and you didn't listen. You were so fucking selfish, and now she has to pick up the pieces. _I_ have to pick up the pieces. Did you even love her at all?" She had to resist the urge to kick at the dirt. "What a fucking waste."

She turned and left, seething with useless anger, and went back to her car. She pulled out her phone to book a flight, hoping that she wouldn't end up spending more than she had to but not putting a huge amount of effort into searching for the best fare. Time wasn't a luxury that she had... or at least not time to spend searching the internet. She didn't know how long she would be staying with Lexa... probably just a few days, she figured, but she didn't immediately book a flight home, just in case Lexa's father changed his mind about letting her stay at their house (there was always motels, but she didn't want to add that expense if she could avoid it) and Lexa might not even want to see her, given the fact that she'd asked Anya to do one (impossible) thing and she'd (inevitably) failed to do it. 

She hoped that she would at least be allowed to stay long enough to do some laundry before turning back around, because she was on the last set of clean clothes that she'd packed, and she wasn't about to drive all of the miles and hours home when laundromats existed. 

She texted the flight information to Captain Woods and then headed for the airport. The soonest flight she could get was still hours away, but she didn't want to take any chances. She got there and parked, trying not to think about yet another expense that she would either have to find the money for or put on the credit card (and she _would_ pay it all back... just as soon as she got her financial aid check next semester). She got through security easily enough, and after a quick stop to get some food, went to the gate to wait.

The flight was uneventful, with almost everyone sleeping through most of it. Anya put in headphones and proceeded to ignore the in-flight movie. Her eyes felt grainy and bloodshot by the time they landed, and she was sure that she looked like absolute hell, but there was nothing for it.

A man in a uniform approached her. "Ms. Colville?"

"Anya's fine."

"This way, ma'am." 

Anya sighed. She hated being called ma'am, but when dealing with the military it was pretty much unavoidable. Never mind the fact that the person who'd been sent to retrieve her was probably older than she was. "Let's go," she said, dragging the small suitcase that she'd brought behind her. 

The drive to the base wasn't long, and it looked pretty much like every other base she'd ever been on. It almost felt like coming home, except when she went home she pretty much knew what she was walking into, and here... here she had no idea. She hadn't been able to talk to Lexa or her father. She had no way of knowing what kind of shape Lexa was in, whether she was still completely in denial or whether she had started to process, and if she had, how far she'd gotten.

She was not trained for this. She didn't know what she was doing, she might get it all wrong...

But she was the one that Lexa had called. She was the one that Lexa had reached out to. She had to do this, because if there was anyone else, surely she would have called them instead. Lexa had had plenty of people that she talked to at school, but very few people that she opened up to on any level, very few people that she shared more than a surface connection with. 

She needed a shower, and a nap, and something to eat. 

Instead, she was walking into the lion's den. 

"This is it," the airman said, pulling up in front of a house that looked basically like all of the other houses. "I'm supposed to tell you that if you need anything, you can call the Captain."

"Will do," Anya said. "Thank you."

He got out of the car to get her bag from the trunk, and she smiled and nodded and rolled it up to the front door. He waited a minute, then got back in a drove off. She rang the bell and waited. And waited. And waited. She knocked, and rang the bell again. 

After probably five minutes, the door cracked open. "What—" Lexa's eye (the one she could see) widened. "Anya?"

"Last I checked, although I'm feeling less than human at the moment. Are you going to let me in?"

Lexa stepped back, letting her into a house that looked uninhabited, save for the shoes lined up against one wall in the little entryway. Anya kicked off her shoes and nudged them into line, and looked back at Lexa, who was still staring at her. "Your father didn't tell you I was coming?"

Lexa shrugged. "If he did, I wasn't listening." She shut the door. "What are you doing here?"

"I came to check on you. Make sure you're okay."

"I'm fine."

Anya couldn't tell if this was denial or a blatant lie. "Okay. Do you... where should I put my stuff?"

"No idea," Lexa said. "There's no guest room." _And you're not welcome to share with me,_ was the implication. "Should have asked my dad, I guess."

"I guess so," Anya said, because getting angry wasn't going to get her anywhere. "Would it be okay if I took a quick shower, at least?"

Lexa shrugged. "Go ahead. I'm sure I don't need to tell you where the bathroom is."

"I suspect I can manage," Anya said. 

"I'll get you towels." She went to a closet and came back with a towel and a washcloth. "Do you need anything else?"

"Actually... before I do that... I don't actually have any clean clothes. I should probably..."

"You can borrow something."

"Underwear?"

Lexa shrugged again. "It's just clothes."

"Okay." Anya waited while Lexa retrieved clothing for her, then ducked into the bathroom, stripping down and standing under the stream of water for far long than she probably should have, but she just needed to clear her head. She just needed to figure out how she was going to do this... whatever this was.

She turned off the water when it started to cool off, taking her time drying off and dressing. When she finally stepped out of the bathroom, Lexa held out her hands. "I just started the washer. I'll throw them in."

"You went in my bag?"

"You showed up at my door."

"Touché." She handed over the clothes, standing there feeling awkward and out of place, but there was nothing for it. The only way out was through, for both of them. 

Lexa came back a minute later. "Hungry?"

"Starved."

"Cereal okay?"

"Cereal's fine." It was, after all, a staple of the college kid diet, right? Of course she was going to have to figure out how to feed herself now, because she wouldn't be living in the dorms and wouldn't have access to the dining halls, at least not without paying. And the food wasn't really good enough to spend actual money on unless one was truly desperate. 

Lexa went into the kitchen and got two bowls, pouring Cheerios into each and then dousing them with a splash of milk. Anya had eaten with her enough times to know that she hated when her cereal got soggy, so she only put enough milk on them to moisten them. She stuck a spoon in each and brought one over to Anya, jerking her chin toward the couch. "I don't bother with the table," she said.

"I thought your father always—" Anya started, but Lexa cut her off.

"I'm a fucking adult," she said. "I don't give a shit what my father wants."

_Whoa._ "Okay." Anya sat at one end of the couch, and Lexa sat at the other... and proceeded to poke multigrain O's around her bowl without her spoon ever actually making it to her mouth. Anya ate, and when she was done found that she was hungrier than when she'd started. "Are you planning to eat that, or just play with it?" she asked.

"You want it?" Lexa held the bowl out, offering.

"No," Anya said. "I want you to eat it."

"I'm not hungry."

She frowned. "When was the last time you ate?"

"Last night."

"What did you eat?"

"I don't remember."

"Would your father—"

"Will you stop asking about my father? I just live with him. I don't talk to him."

Anya bit her tongue, fighting a frown. "Lexa, it's important that you eat. I know that you're going through—"

"You don't know _shit_ about what I'm going through," Lexa growled. "You don't know a fucking thing. Don't try to pretend like you have any idea what I'm going through. You don't. You couldn't. You don't even – not with the way you are."

Anya took a deep breath, let it out slowly, reminding herself that Lexa was in pain, Lexa was grieving, Lexa had just lost the first person she'd ever loved. Which didn't mean that Anya had to let her treat her like shit, but it meant that she was willing to give her a little bit of leeway and the benefit of the doubt that she wasn't really thinking about what she was saying, or the impact that it might have... even though it was unlikely to be true. 

And Lexa didn't know everything about who she was or what she'd been through or what she might or might not know about losing people. 

"I may not know exactly what you're going through, but I know that you're going through a lot," Anya said. "I know that it probably feels like the entire world is crumbling around you. I was just going to say that not eating isn't going to help. Not having any fuel for your body to run on is just going to make it worse, because when you're running on empty, every thought, every emotion, just becomes overwhelming."

Lexa just glared at her. Anya stared impassively back. They stayed like that for a full minute, maybe longer, before Lexa finally lifted the spoon to her mouth and chewed. After a few bites, though, she gave up, setting it on the coffee table. "I'm not hungry."

Anya decided that half a bowl of cereal was better than nothing, and finished the rest for her. She took the bowls to the kitchen, rinsing them in the sink and then putting them in the dishwasher, and then found some yogurt in the fridge because she was still hungry.

"Make yourself at home," Lexa said. 

"I'm not going to make you play host," Anya said. "I'm not here to be a guest."

"Why _are_ you here?"

"I needed to see how you are."

"If I tell you I'm fine, will you go?"

"If I _believe_ that you're fine, then I'll go," Anya said. 

"What will that take?"

"Not throwing a tantrum about eating would be a start," Anya said. 

"Right." Lexa drew her knees up to her chest, tucking her arms around herself. "You told my father you were coming and you didn't tell me?"

"You've been ignoring my calls," Anya said. 

"You could have texted."

"I could have," Anya acknowledged. "But it's far too easy to hide behind words on a screen. It's a lot harder to hide things in your voice."

"Right." Lexa rested her head against the back of the couch and closed her eyes. "Did you see her?" she asked.

Anya's stomach knotted. "No, Lexa," she said. "I told you..."

"You still could have seen her."

"I didn't see her," Anya said. "I went... to the funeral, but it was... you couldn't see her."

Lexa nodded, eyes still shut. She shifted, pushing herself deeper into the cushions. Despite being as neutral and unremarkable as any of the other furniture, it was at least somewhat comfortable. Which was good, considering that from the sounds of it, it was going to be Anya's bed for at least a day or two.

After that, Lexa didn't say anything, and finally Anya got up and grabbed her backpack, pulling out a book to read. She wished it was for pleasure, but no, she was trying to get ahead on the reading for the classes that she would be TA-ing in the fall, so that when she had to lead discussion sections, she would actually know what they were supposed to be discussing. She didn't want to have to be doing the reading for those classes on top of the reading for her own. She was starting to question her own sanity, really. Why had she decided that going on to get a Master's degree was a good idea? 

Lexa only moved when the washer buzzed, getting up long enough to switch the clothing into the dryer before collapsing back on the couch and curling in on herself again. She didn't speak, didn't move, barely seemed to breathe, and Anya had never seen her this still before. She wasn't like Costia, who had never seemed to stop moving, but Lexa's presence had always been one of energy in reserve, barely contained behind the placid (or more often indifferent) façade. Now she was just... absent.

Anya got up when she got hungry again, finding bread and deli meat to make herself a sandwich. For Lexa she made some toast and spread it with peanut butter, setting it in front of her without comment and hoping that she would decide to take an interest. She did... for a few bites, and then the rest got pushed away. Anya ended up flipping the two pieces so they were sticky side in to make a toasted peanut butter sandwich, then wrapped it up and put it in the refrigerator. Maybe she would want it later... or maybe Anya would force it on her later. Whichever. 

"You don't have to do that," Anya said, when Lexa got her laundry from the dryer and started to fold it, but if Lexa heard (and the likelihood that she didn't was pretty slim, given the fact that there was only a few yards of space between them) she ignored it. So Anya let her, because at least it meant she was showing some signs of life. She watched as Lexa took the carefully folded stacks and put them back in her suitcase, zipping it up and setting it near the door.

"Subtle," she said.

"I don't need you here," Lexa said. "I'm fine."

"You're not fine," Anya said. "You've spent most of the last several hours curled up with your forehead pressed to your knees, not moving. That's not fine."

"I'm tired," Lexa said. "I'm not allowed to be tired?"

"What have you done that's made you so tired?" Anya asked. "Did you go for a long run this morning?" 

"No," Lexa said. "There's nowhere to run."

"There's a whole base," Anya said. 

"There are people."

Anya sighed. "Maybe tomorrow we can find a park or something. A preserve. Somewhere where there won't be as many people."

"Tomorrow you'll be home," Lexa said. 

Anya didn't try to argue. Maybe Lexa was right. Maybe she would be home tomorrow. What good was it going to do for her to be here if Lexa didn't want her here? How could she help her when she didn't want to be helped? This was her summer break, the last one she was likely to have for a very long time, unless she ended up working in a school, but that wasn't high on her list of career goals. "I'm not sure I can face two flights in one day," she said. "Can I at least stay the night?"

Lexa shrugged. "I can't stop you."

They both turned at the sound of a key in the door, but before it opened fully Lexa's door had slammed shut. Anya looked after her, then stood up to greet her father. "Anya," she said, holding out a hand. "Thank you for sending someone to pick me up."

Captain Woods shook it. "I got your message," he said, which Anya chose to take to mean that further thanks wasn't necessary. He looked down and saw the suitcase at the door. "I'm sorry she didn't help you get settled," he said. "She's..."

"Heartbroken," Anya supplied. "It's going to take her some time to get her feet back under her and feel like herself again."

He nodded. "I hope you were able to find something to eat. I keep meaning to do some shopping, but usually that was something she took care of, since she got old enough to do so. We can order in tonight, if you'd like." 

"I had some cereal and a sandwich," Anya said. "I tried to get her to eat, but..."

"She's stubborn," Captain Woods finished for her. "What would like to order?"

"I don't suppose there's sushi around here?" Anya asked. 

"You suppose right," he said. "We do our best to bring all off the comforts of home to base, but we're still pretty far from anywhere out here." He looked at her, really focusing on her for probably the first time. "Why sushi?"

"Because Costia didn't like it, and Lexa did," Anya said. "I thought maybe if we could offer her something that doesn't have a slew of memories attached to it, maybe she would actually eat."

"Ah." He shook his head. "Anything else she didn't like?"

"Not that I can think of off the top of my head," Anya said. "What've you got?"

"Pizza, Chinese... the usual."

"Chinese, I guess," Anya said. "At least then we can get a few different things, and maybe one of them will tempt her."

He nodded and retrieved the menu, and Anya picked out a few things that she knew Lexa liked, and he made the order, then headed out to pick it up. Anya went to Lexa's door and knocked. "Dinner will be here soon," she said through the door.

"I'm not hungry," Lexa answered. 

"You should eat anyway," Anya said. "At least a little bit."

"Maybe later."

"You need to eat, Lexa."

"I said later."

Anya gave up. For now. She went back to the living room, and when Lexa's dad returned she ate, conveying to him the conversation she'd had with his daughter. 

He sighed. "Maybe once I've gone to bed," he said. "She won't come out as long as I'm here." Anya raised an eyebrow. "It's easier for her to be angry at me than to actually deal with her feelings," he told her. "It's easier to burn with rage than to look into the gaping hole that's left behind when someone you love is gone and never coming back."

"Why is she angry at _you_ , though?" Anya asked. "Just because you're here?"

"That might be part of it," Captain Woods said. "I'm a convenient target, and it's not as if she doesn't have a lifetime of pent-up resentment toward me to fuel the fire." He sighed, ran a hand over her shaved head. "But the main reason..." He shook his head. "I shouldn't even be telling you this, but you need to understand what's going on, I think."

"Okay," Anya said, when he didn't continue. 

"The person who hit Costia, the person driving the car that killed her... he was military. He was off base, drunk, and he hit her. And he's not being brought up on charges for it. She blames me for that. She doesn't understand, or doesn't want to hear, that the girl's parents didn't want to press charges. They didn't want an investigation. They just wanted to take their daughter's body home to be buried. It wasn't going to bring their daughter back to go through everything in court, when it would probably get pled out and he would end up serving little to no time."

"What does any of that have to do with you, though?" she asked. 

"It's very likely I would have been the one defending him, if it _had_ gone to court," he said. "That's my job."

"Even when he's guilty, and you know he's guilty?"

"Even then."

"So she blames you for something that you potentially would have done, because you had to do it."

"Yes."

Anya frowned. "She's grieving," she said. "There's not necessarily a lot of rational thought going on right now. She'll... just give her a little bit of time and she'll realize that it's not your fault, that blaming you isn't going to do anyone any good. It's not going to bring Costia back. It's not going to make it hurt any less. She's a smart girl. She'll figure it out."

"Maybe," he said. "I hope so. Having her lock herself in her room every time I'm in the house isn't really... it's not healthy for either one of us."

"Did you talk to her?"

"That's why she's so angry," he said. "I probably went about it the wrong way. I'm... not very good at dealing with grief." 

Anya nodded. They'd been talking about families once, and Anya had been jokingly complaining about what a pain in the ass it was to have three parents, and Lexa had told her that she should consider herself lucky, because she only had one. Which was when she'd found out that Lexa's mother had died when she was young, and that her father had dumped her on her grandparents for a little while in the aftermath, before coming back and taking her with him when his assignment changed. The bitterness at the abandonment was still fresh a decade later.

They ate their food in silence after that, because Anya didn't know what to say, and Lexa's father didn't seem all that interested in saying anything more. When the food on their plates was gone (leaving the rest for Lexa if she chose to emerge) and the dishes were rinsed and put in the dishwasher, he retreated to his room, which doubled as an office, and shut the door. He didn't bother to say good night.


	3. Chapter 3

Anya sat by herself in the living room, trying to figure out what the hell she was supposed to do. Why was she even here? Lexa didn't want anything to do with her; all she wanted was for Anya to go away. And who was she kidding, thinking that there was anything she could do for her, anyway? But the soonest she could leave was tomorrow.

She was grateful for the fact that on-base housing tended to be pretty uniform, because it meant she didn't have to open every door to figure out where the linen closet was. She found a set of sheets and a spare blanket and pillow, and set about converting the couch into a bed as best she could. She switched on the TV, flipping through the channels until she found something that could serve as acceptable background noise, and then tried to settle in... but sleep didn't come. She couldn't stop thinking about what Lexa might be doing behind a closed (and almost certainly locked) door. She wasn't... Anya didn't _think_ she was likely to do anything stupid and permanent about her grief, but when it came right down to it, how well did she _really_ know her? Lexa had loved Costia. That was probably the one thing that anyone who had known her – them – was absolutely sure of. The rest she kept close to her chest, hidden behind a mask of indifference, unless she chose to allow you to see behind it. 

Around eleven Anya finally gave up on sleeping. She went to Lexa's door and knocked again. "Lexa," she said. "It's safe to come out."

At first there was no response, but finally she thought she heard some shuffling and rustling, and then the door cracked open. "Go away," Lexa said. "Why won't you just leave me the fuck alone?"

"Because I need you to know that you're not," Anya said. "I need you to know that even though there is nothing that I can do to make the pain go away, I will be with you as you work through it, if you let me."

Lexa's eyes narrowed. "Did he tell you to say that?"

"Your father? No. He didn't tell me to say anything."

"But he's the one who invited you here."

Was _that_ what was pissing her off? Did she think that her father had abdicated responsibility to Anya? (Was she wrong if she did?) "No," Anya said. "I asked him if I could come. I wanted to see you. I wanted... You sent me to do something for you. I wish I could have come and told you that you were right, that they were trying to—"

Lexa shook her head, a sharp jerk accompanied by a quick dismissive gesture. 

"I asked him if I could come to see you, just to make sure... not that you were okay. I don't expect you to be okay. Not now, and maybe not for quite a while. But you're my friend, Lexa. Possibly the best friend I made in college, even though I've only known you for a year. And I wanted to make sure that you knew that as bad as things are, as much as things hurt... you don't have to go through it alone."

"I don't—" Lexa started, then stopped. "You've seen me. You've told me. I'm fine. I can handle it. It sucks, but I can handle it. Okay? Just... go home. Enjoy your summer break. I appreciate you coming all this way to check on me. I promise I'll be fine."

The lies rolled off her tongue easily, so easily that maybe she genuinely believed them. Maybe she thought that whatever she was doing _was_ coping, maybe she really thought that she was doing okay, given the circumstances. And hell, maybe she was.

"You're not eating," Anya said. She didn't want to harp on it, she didn't want to nag... but it was a plain fact. Eating was a basic human need, and she wasn't meeting it. A couple of bites of cereal and maybe a quarter of a piece of peanut butter toast wasn't enough to sustain her even on the most basic level. Even if she didn't move, and her body was only burning the calories it took to keep all of her organs functioning, it wasn't enough.

"I told you—"

"I don't care," Anya said. "I don't care if you're hungry or not. You need to eat."

"I just want to sleep," Lexa said. "I was just falling asleep and you woke me up."

"I'm sorry," Anya said, even though she wasn't sure she believed her... or that she _should_ believe her. "Come eat something, and then I'll let you go back to bed."

"And then in the morning you'll leave? If I eat, you'll leave?"

Anya closed her eyes for a moment, then nodded and opened them again. "If you eat, in the morning I'll book the earliest flight back home."

"Fine." Lexa stepped out of her room and went to the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator and pulled out the Chinese leftovers, and made herself a plate. She didn't fill it, but she put a couple of spoonfuls of everything on it, and tossed it into the microwave. "Happy?"

"I'll be happy when you actually eat what's on it," Anya said. "Until then, it's just an empty promise."

Lexa yanked open a drawer and pulled out a set of chopsticks, and Anya wondered (with no small amount of amusement) whether she might just decide to take a run at her with them. It would be pointless; they both knew that Anya could just brush her aside. But it might not stop her. 

The microwave beeping did, though. Lexa retrieved her food and collapsed onto the couch with the plate perched on her knee. "Are you going to sit there and watch me eat?" she asked.

"I don't really have much choice, seeing as that you're sitting on my bed," Anya pointed out.

Lexa started to get up, and Anya reached out to stop her, grabbing the hem of her t-shirt to tug her back down. Her hand brushed against Lexa's hip in the process, and she hissed as if she'd been burned, and glared until Anya let go. "Don't touch me," she said. "Don't you ever—"

"I'm sorry," Anya said. "Just eat. I'm going to look for a flight home."

"Good." Lexa stared at the plate in front of her, and slowly picked up a piece of broccoli with the chopsticks, lifting it to her mouth. Anya watched out of the corner of her eye as she chewed for too long, and finally swallowed. 

She didn't finish the food on the plate. She ate half of it, maybe two-thirds, before she finally shook her head. "I'm done," she said. "I'm fucking done." She got up and dumped the rest in the trash, rinsed the plate and put it in the dishwasher.

"Okay," Anya said. She'd tried. She'd obviously tried, and grief messed with your body more than people realized, at least in her own limited experience with it (which mostly consisted of witnessing it in others, and here she was again with no more clue what to do than she'd ever had, but she'd never been responsible for it before, not like this). "I booked my flight. I leave tomorrow at noon, so I'll be gone before lunch time."

"Good," Lexa said, but with less conviction than she'd had before. "I'm going to bed."

"You know where to find me if you need me," Anya said. "Sleep well."

Lexa just snorted, and disappeared back into her room. Anya barely slept, and in the morning, she saw Lexa only long enough for her to wish her a safe trip home before she retreated again. Anya sighed, told her (through her door) to call if she needed anything, and went back to the airport.

The flight was long, and the car ride longer, so she put in her earpiece and called home.

"Hey kiddo," her mother said. "How are you? _Where_ are you?"

"Driving home from New York," Anya said. "Or... I guess it's home now, anyway." She sighed. "How are you?"

"I'm fine. You're headed home already? I thought you were going out to see your friend."

"I did," Anya said. "She... wasn't happy to see me. At all. So now I'm headed back home." There was a long silence on the other end, and finally she asked, "What? Whatever you want to say, just say it."

"How do you feel about that?" her mother asked. "About leaving her behind?"

"Shitty," Anya said. "I feel absolutely shitty about it, because she is a mess, but she's the kind of mess that insists she's fine, so she's basically a ticking time bomb, and when she blows... I don't know what's going to happen. Because she's not really the exploding type. She's more the imploding type, and I..." She reached behind her sunglasses and scrubbed at her eyes. "Shit. I can't talk about this now. I'm driving."

"I'm sorry," her mother said. "I didn't mean to make you think of him."

"I know," Anya said. "I know. It's not your fault. But... I'd known him for so long, and I haven't even known her a whole year, but if something happened, if she did something... I don't—I can't go through that again. I can't." Her vision was blurring and her voice was thick, and why, _why_ had she thought that calling home was a good idea? Maybe if Nat had picked up the phone, she would have been okay, but... "Fuck!"

"Deep breaths, An. Deep breaths. I'll stay on the line if you want me to, or I'll let you go and you find the next rest area and calm down and call me back when you're not driving."

"I'll be okay," Anya said. "Don't worry."

"I'm your mother," she said. "It's my job to worry."

"I thought you—" Anya shook her head. "Seriously. I'll be all right."

"You thought what?"

"I was about to say something shitty."

"What?"

"I was about to say, 'I thought you delegated that to Nat.'"

"Worrying? No. No, I did most of the worrying," her mother said. "She was a natural. I was the one who was always afraid I was going to do something that was going to mess you up and scar you for life."

"Seriously?"

"Seriously."

"Huh." It had never shown. Anya had always thought of her mom as the one with the plan, the one who always knew exactly where she was going and what she was doing. She was a take-charge kind of person, and the rest of them just got dragged along in her wake sometimes. Not in a bad way. "That's what Lexa thought," she said. "That her father had called me to come deal with her so that he didn't have to."

"Her father is...?"

"Air Force. JAG."

"Ah. Did he?"

"No. But I think he was pretty relieved when I showed up. Like now that I was there, the pressure was off him."

"It's certainly not outside the realm of possibility," her mother said. "Some people aren't very good at dealing with grief, especially when there's really nothing that they can do to fix it."

"From what she's said, Lexa's dad definitely falls into that category," Anya said. "When her mother died, he just dumped her on her grandparents for most of a year, and then when he finally came back to get her, he pretty much never mentioned her mother again."

"How old was she?" her mom asked.

"Eight."

Silence, and then, "Are you fucking kidding me? He _abandoned_ an eight-year-old girl who had just lost her mother?"

"Well, he left her with his parents, so I don't know if that _technically_ counts as abandonment," Anya said, "but yeah, pretty much. I guess he didn't have it in him to deal with her grief and his own, so he just... didn't. And I get the feeling that his parents weren't exactly farm and fuzzy people either, so Lexa was pretty much on her own."

"And now she's on her own again." 

Anya frowned. "Are you trying to guilt-trip me?"

"No," her mother said. "I just... you said you felt shitty about leaving. So why did you?"

"She didn't want me there! It's not that big a place. There's not even a room for me. I slept on the couch. She just... what good is it going to do her to have me in her face all the time?"

"It will mean she can't completely shut down," her mother said. "If you keep dragging her back into the world, she won't be able to just lock herself away from it. No matter how much she might want to, and no matter how much it might make things easier for everyone else to let her... the last thing that she needs is to be left alone with her own thoughts, to be tortured by her own demons, while everyone else just sits idly by and waits for her to snap out of it. Because she might not."

"Great pep talk," Anya muttered. "What do you want me to do?"

"I want you to follow your heart," her mother said. "And before you say it, yes, I know that I sound like Nat. Spend over two decades with someone and they'll start to rub off on you. I want you to do what you think is right."

"What if she just slams the door in my face?" Anya asked. "What if she refuses to let me in?"

"Then you find somewhere to stay, and just keep showing up until she gives in."

"That is... seriously fucked up, Mom. You know that, right? That's like... stalker shit. Or harassment at the very least. Not to mention the fact that she could probably have her dad put my name at the gate as someone who's not allowed inside."

"Would she do that?"

Anya thought about it, then shook her head, even though her mother couldn't see it. "Probably not. That would require her to actually speak to her father, and I don't think that's happening any time soon."

"This just keeps getting better and better," her mom said dryly. "Take a few days if you need to. Give her the chance to cool off; it's all still an open wound, still raw. Then reach out to her, see if maybe she's ready to accept a little more support."

"And if she isn't?"

"Then you decide what you need to do."

"Thanks," Anya said, and then they said their goodbyes and she hung up. She wasn't sure that the conversation had actually done her any good... but her mother was right. She knew what she needed to do, and it wasn't sitting around all summer wondering what was happening with Lexa. If she didn't go back, she was on her own, and even though her mother had never met Lexa, she had her pegged: if left to her own devices, she would withdraw completely, and Anya didn't trust her father to even notice.

But she needed a day or two to rest, and pack, and just... prepare herself for what might be the longest week or month or summer of her life.

* * *

This time she didn't fly. This time she drove. It would have been more fun with someone riding with her, but funnily enough, she didn't have any friends who would be too keen on the idea of a road trip to the middle of nowhere, where they would then have to find their own way back because she wasn't likely to be returning any time soon. The days blurred into a wash of road and frequently barren landscape and billboards trying to entice people off the highway to see the World's Blankest Blank, and she was tempted a few times to stop, thinking maybe Lexa might appreciate the pictures she could take of herself with whatever it was, but she never did. She just drove all day and slept in the least scary-looking motel she could find at night.

It took three days. The day before she arrived, she called the Captain to let him know that she was coming back. He made a noncommittal noise, and didn't seem to be bothered one way or the other about it. She was able to get past the gates, though, so that had to count for something. She drove to Lexa's house and pulled in the driveway, parking next to the car already there, and dragged her suitcase up to the door.

The door opened before she'd managed to free a hand to ring the bell. "Come in," Captain Woods said. "I was just heading out – emergency meeting – but there's food in the fridge. Lexa's in her room. If there's anything you need, send me a text and I'll get back to you as soon as I can."

"Thanks," Anya said, and watched as he brushed past her and got in his car, driving away like something was chasing him. She shut the door behind him and locked it, and dumped her stuff in the living room. She knocked on Lexa's door lightly, and then harder when there was no response. 

"Lexa?" No answer. She twisted the knob, but it was locked. "Lexa, open the door." Still no answer. She banged her hand against it in frustration. "Damn it, Lexa. I know you don't want to see me. I know you told me to go, and I did, and then I came back without asking permission, or even telling you I was coming. I'm a shitty friend. But I would be a shittier one if I just let you go through this alone."

Silence. Silence so deep and profound, even when she pressed her ear to the door and scrunched her eyes shut (as if that would help), that she started to wonder if Lexa was even in there at all.

She pulled out her phone and texted Lexa's father. 

**ANYA:** When was the last time you saw your daughter?

She was surprised when an answer came almost immediately.

**C. WOODS:** Before you came the first time. She avoids me.

Anya stared at the screen. Was he serious? He hadn't seen Lexa in over a week now? She didn't care _how_ good Lexa was at avoiding him... you didn't let your grieving daughter hide from you for an entire week! 

**ANYA:** Have you heard her?

**C. WOODS:** What are you trying to say?

**ANYA:** How do you even know if she's still there? How do you know she didn't run?

**C. WOODS:** I've heard her door open a few times.

Anya swallowed an irritated growl. 

**ANYA:** Okay. Thanks.

So Lexa was probably in there. Probably. Anya tried banging on her door one more time. "Lexa, if you don't open the door, I will pick the lock. You know that I know how." Because one time she'd stupidly managed to lock herself out of her own dorm room, and she didn't want to have to go ask the RD for the spare key, so she'd just picked it, and that was a lot more complicated that the cheap thing in front of her. Hell, this thing didn't even lock with a key; she just had to find a bobby pin and she would be in.

She went into Lexa's bathroom and rifled her drawers until she found what she needed, and crouched down in front of the lock, fiddling with it until she heard a click and felt the knob turn. She held back for just a minute, giving an enraged Lexa every opportunity to confront her.

Nothing. The room was dark, every bit of light blocked out except what now crept in from the hallway. There was no sound, no rustling of the sheets, not even the sound of breathing. The air felt thick, and smelled of dirty laundry and unwashed bodies. 

"Lexa?" She stepped into the room, and almost immediately banged her shin on something. "Fuck!" She reached for the light switch and flicked it on.

The room was a disaster. The desk was at an angle to the wall, and the chair was overturned beside it. Everything that should have been on shelves was strewn around, clothing littered the floor, spilled out of suitcases and boxes, and the blankets were a tangled mess on the bed. Somewhere in the middle was an unmoving lump that, as far as Anya could tell, was still wearing the same clothing it had been in when she left.

Her insides turned to ice, and she kicked a path through the rubble to crouch beside the bed, reaching out and shaking her gently, her fingers searching for the pulse in her wrist, and then in her neck. She pushed the hair from her face, and Lexa opened her eyes slowly, as if waking from a very long sleep, and blinked. She didn't say a word. 

"You made a bit of a mess," Anya said. "Did it make you feel better?" If Lexa registered the words, she gave no indication. "Have you changed your clothes since I left?" No answer. "Have you eaten?" Nothing. "Have you left this room?" Given the lack of certain smells, she'd at least left it to go to the bathroom... but how often had she even done that? If you didn't eat or drink, your body didn't produce much waste.

"I'm not going to let you do this," Anya said. "I'm not going to let you just... stop. You can fall apart if you need to, you can cry and scream and rage if that's what you need, but you don't just get to end. Not on my watch." She pushed herself up to sit on the edge of the bed, and grabbed Lexa by the arms and yanked her up beside her. She let go with one hand, and Lexa immediately began to list back toward her inert position. "No," Anya said. "Uh-uh. We're not doing this. We're not playing this game."

"Not a game." Lexa's voice was cracked and hoarse, and she barely sounded like herself. She sounded... broken. 

"I guess not," Anya agreed. "I'm pretty sure no one's having any fun." She tugged on Lexa until she was in a position where it would require more effort for her to fall over than to stay upright. "When was the last time you ate?" she asked.

Lexa just stared at her. Stared, like she couldn't even expend the effort to glare. Like the lights were on, but no one was home. It was honestly terrifying.

"Showered?" 

Not even a flicker.

"Lexa... you need to work with me here. I need you to work with me. It's not going to go down like this, and I don't want to have to... You need to get up. You need to shower and change your clothes and your sheets. You need to eat. I can't imagine what this all feels like to you, but you don't get to just lay down and _die_. Costia w—"

"Don't. Say. Her. Name." The words were a growl, clipped so that each word became its own sentence, its own command. "Don't you ever, _ever_ say her name again."

"Okay," Anya said, holding up her hands in surrender. "Okay. I won't."

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, whatever force had temporarily animated Lexa fled, and she slumped, dead-eyed and unmoving again. Anya just watched her, watched the slow blink of her eyes, the time it took for her to open her eyes again growing longer each time, and she was slipping away, trying to go somewhere that Anya couldn't follow, and she wasn't going to let that happen. Not now, not ever.

"Fuck this," she said, and got up. She went across the hall and yanked back the shower curtain, then stomped back into Lexa's room, heedless of what she might be stepping on. "Get up or I'm getting you up," she snapped. Lexa didn't move. She didn't even open her eyes. So Anya reached for her, grabbed her and lifted her, and she felt too light, the angles of her too sharp, but she couldn't think about that right now. She heaved her over her shoulder and carried her into the bathroom, setting her down in the bathtub, hoping she would stand.

She didn't. She didn't even try. She just let her legs give way beneath her, falling in a tangled heap, and Anya just shook her head and turned on the water, cold, and didn't feel the slightly bit of remorse when Lexa jerked back to life with a sputtering gasp.

"Get up," Anya said. "Wash yourself, or I'll do it for you. I think you know I'm not playing around now."

"Get out," Lexa said, but the words barely made it past her lips, which she licked, sucking in the water. "You're not going to stand there and watch me."

"I'm not going anywhere," Anya said. "You don't want me to watch you, then get up and close the shower curtain. You might want to turn up the heat on the water a little, while you're at it. And undress."

Lexa frowned, lines forming between her brows. "I'm afraid I'll fall," she said after a few seconds. "I get dizzy."

Anya took a breath, let it out slowly. She reached into the shower and turned off the water, then reached for Lexa and helped her up, not letting go until she was steady. "You'll be okay," she said. "I'll be right here."

"I can't—" Lexa started, and Anya opened her mouth to interrupt, but then Lexa finished, "I can't undress in the shower."

"Okay," Anya said, and she reached out again, helping her step over the edge of the tub. "If I don't hear the water running again within the next three minutes, I'm coming back in."

"Yes ma'am," Lexa said, and Anya would have been annoyed if she didn't know that it was habit. If that's what Lexa needed to fall back on right now, she would accept it. She stepped out of the bathroom and went across the hall to strip Lexa's bed. She heard the shower come back on, so she left her alone, hoping that she would actually remember soap and shampoo, and not just stand there under the running water, although even that would be an improvement.

She put the sheets in the laundry and started them running, finding a fresh set in the closet and making Lexa's bed quickly. With that done, she went to check on her. She peeked into the bathroom and saw the clothing she'd been wearing in a sodden pile on the floor, and the shower curtain was closed. "Everything okay?" Anya asked.

"My hair," Lexa said. "It's all knots."

"Just use lots of conditioner," Anya said. "We'll figure it out." Trusting that Lexa could manage to function on her own for a few minutes, at least, she went into the kitchen to see what there was that she could make that Lexa might be able to stomach after so many days of not eating anything. Given the fact that the peanut butter toast sandwich she'd made was still in the refrigerator, she was pretty confident that Lexa hadn't eaten since then. And she would have words with Captain Woods about that.

She decided on instant oatmeal and hot cocoa made with milk. Carbs and protein, hopefully easy on her stomach, and hopefully at least somewhat appealing. She popped the bowl into the microwave and pressed the button for two minutes, almost twice the time that the package said, but Lexa liked her oatmeal with the moisture pretty much entirely cooked out of it. She heard the water shut off, and realized that she hadn't grabbed anything clean for Lexa to put on.

It was impossible to tell from the state of her room what was actually clean, so she just went to her own bag and pulled something out, handing it in to Lexa. She thought she heard her mumble thanks, but maybe she was just imagining it. 

When Lexa emerged, she looked exhausted, dark smudges under her eyes, her cheeks a little too hollow. She looked at Anya like a dog waiting for its next command, and it broke her heart... but at the same time, she couldn't help feeling a little triumphant that she was at least standing under her own power. "I'm tired," she said. 

"I know," Anya said. "You're going to eat, and I'm going to untangle your hair, and then you can go back to bed if you want to. I changed the sheets."

Lexa nodded, resigned if nothing else, and sat down in front of the couch. Anya set the oatmeal and cocoa in front of her. "Just do your best," she said. "That's all I ask." She went and found a comb and sat on the couch behind Lexa, working slowly from the ends of her hair up to the roots, working out every knot and tangle until she could pull the comb through the waves of her hair without it snagging. By the time she was finished, so was Lexa... and both the bowl and the mug were empty. 

"Good," she said. "That's good, Lexa."

Lexa nodded, slumping sideways so that her shoulder pressed into Anya's knee, and since she didn't seem inclined to move, Anya just kept combing, then decided if they weren't going to end up in this same mess again, she ought to do something to contain Lexa's hair. So she parted it, then braided each side, joining the two braids into one at the nape of her neck, and secured it with a hair elastic she kept pretty much perpetually around her wrist. "There," she said, draping the end of it over Lexa's shoulder. "Better?"

Lexa reached up and touched it, then nodded again. 

"Okay."

Still she didn't move, and after a while her head tipped until her cheek rested on Anya's knee, and when Anya leaned down, she saw that if Lexa wasn't completely asleep, she was close enough to that it hardly made a difference. "Okay," she repeated, and picked her up for the second time that night, much more gently this time, and carried her to bed, tucking her in and leaning down to kiss her forehead. "Sweet dreams," she said, though she doubted very much that the wish would carry through. Probably the best they could hope for now is that whatever dreams Lexa had, she wouldn't remember them. 

She found a bottle of water in the fridge and put it on Lexa's nightstand so that it would be there if she woke up thirsty, and then went to go deal with everything else. She switched the sheets from the washer to the dryer when they were done, and did a load of towels and Lexa's discarded clothes. They would worry about the rest tomorrow. She knew that she should sleep, but she was waiting for Lexa's father to come home. So she rummaged the cabinets and inventoried the freezer, making a shopping list of things that she would need to actually make meals. 

It was well after midnight when Captain Woods returned. He nodded at her when he saw her, but that was the limits of his greeting, and he seemed inclined to just disappear into his room. 

"Do you have a minute?" Anya asked. "We need to talk."

He looked at her. "It's been a long night," he said. "Can it wait until morning?"

"No." She shook her head. "No, it can't wait." He frowned, and Anya could see Lexa in that expression, and expected that she would hate to hear it. She didn't wait for him to say anything, just dove right in, because she'd had plenty of time for her anger to fester and boil. "Is that what you were going to do with Lexa?" she asked. "Just wait? Wait for her to snap out of it? Wait for her to just magically be okay? Because if you'd waited much longer, you might have found yourself waiting forever."

"What are you talking about?" he asked. "There's no need to be—"

"If you use any word that even remotely sounds like 'dramatic' or 'hysterical' or any of the other words that men use to dismiss women's emotions, I will not be held accountable for my actions," Anya said, not caring that it sounded like – and was – a threat.

To his credit, he didn't immediately snap into officer mode and put her in her place like an insubordinate soldier, or airmen (airperson?) like he might have. His eyes narrowed and his jaw clenched, but he didn't lash out. "It's been a long day," he said. "I'm going to need you to explain what you're so upset about."

She took a breath, let it out slowly, trying to maintain her composure when she wanted to grab him by his shoulders and shake him until his head rattled. "Your daughter," she said. "I'm upset about your daughter."

His shoulders slumped. "What did she do?" he said. "I'm sorry if she's trying to—"

"She didn't _do_ anything," Anya said, "and that's exactly the problem. From the time I left until I finally went into her room today, she didn't do _anything_ , except occasionally go to the bathroom. She didn't shower. She didn't change her clothes. She didn't _eat_ , and as far as I can tell, she barely even drank any water. I had to physically pick her up out of her bed and dump her in the shower to get her to show any signs of life at all."

His eyes closed, and it was a few seconds before they opened again. "I'll deal with her," he said, and started to walk toward her room.

Anya blocked his path. "Oh really?" she asked. "What are you going to do? Because you had a week to quote-unquote deal with her, and you did nothing. You let her just..." She swallowed hard. "Do you have any idea how much pain she's in? Do you have a f—a clue how much she's struggling? If you left her much longer..." She shook her head. "She was shutting down. My friend. Your _daughter_. She was trying to _die_. And you... Do you even care? At all?"

"Of course I care," he said, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Of course I do."

"Then why did you just _leave_ her?" Anya demanded. "Did you even look in to check on her?"

"She locked the door," he said.

Anya rolled her eyes. "So pick the fucking lock! That's what I did! Just because she doesn't _want_ to be helped doesn't mean she doesn't _need_ it! You're the adult! You're the _parent_! As much as kids hate to hear it, sometimes the whole ' while you're living under my roof, you follow my rules' applies. And when she's as, as unstable as she is right now, maybe the rule needs to be that she's not allowed to lock her f—her door. When she's not eating, maybe the rule needs to be that she needs to come out of her room and sit down with you for at least one meal per day."

"I have a job to do," he said. "I have cases that demand a large amount of time my time and attention. I can't just drop that to deal with her— with her. She's an adult. She—"

"No," Anya said. "Stop. You don't get to just say, 'Well, she's eighteen, she's an adult, she gets to make her own decisions.' You don't get to just abdicate responsibility as a parent because you have other shit going on. That's not how it works. You think you're the first parent who has ever had to balance the demands of their job with doing what needs to get done to make sure that their kid is taken care of? Right now she's not capable of making decisions. Right now, she needs someone to tell her what to do. She needs someone else to give her structure because she's forgotten how to function. Maybe it will just be for a day or two. Maybe it will be longer. I don't know."

"Sometimes the hardest part of leadership is knowing when to delegate," he said, more to himself than to her. 

"What are you saying?" she asked, when it became clear that he wasn't going to say anything more.

"I'm saying that I don't have the time to do what you're saying needs to be done. Nor do I think that she would respond well if I tried. But you're here. I'm saying that if you're willing, and able... I will support you in whatever manner you need while you help her get back on her feet."

_I need you to be her father!_ But she couldn't scream that, or even say it. It was obvious that he'd already decided that it was too much for him. He'd already checked out... maybe he'd never been all that checked in in the first place. 

"I need somewhere to sleep," she said. "Not on the couch. I want to be in the same room with her. I'll need money to do the shopping, get some food in here."

"I'll have a bed for you by tomorrow. For tonight the couch will have to do. And Lexa has a credit card for emergencies. You can use that."

"Fine," she said. "I'll let you know if I think of anything else."

"Of course," he said. "Was that all?"

Like she was holding him up.

"No."

"I'm going to go to bed then. Have a good night."

She didn't respond, because she'd always been told if she didn't have anything nice to say, she shouldn't say anything at all.

She made herself a bed on the couch and laid down, wrapping her arms around a pillow and hugging it to her chest. She wanted to scream. She wanted to cry. She couldn't do either one. And it was way too late to call home, and what would her parents do, anyway? They'd been the ones who encouraged her to do what she could for Lexa... but she was pretty sure that this wasn't what they'd had in mind. It certainly wasn't what she'd had in mind for the summer, and she didn't remember actually agreeing to do it, but she guessed making demands about a bed and money was close enough to agreement that she couldn't back out now.

Not that she would have. She'd been trapped the minute she reached out and felt that Lexa's heart was still beating. She was alive. Now Anya had to teach her how to live again.


	4. Chapter 4

Captain Woods was up and out the door practically before dawn, and he couldn't have gotten more than a few hours of sleep. From how quickly he moved through his morning routine, Anya was pretty sure that he was doing everything in his power to avoid any further confrontations with her. He needn't have bothered; she wasn't planning on confronting him again anyway. What would be the point? She gave up on him like he'd given up on Lexa.

She got up and showered, changed, checked the kitchen again to see what she could turn into breakfast, and then went to wake Lexa up. She'd gotten eight hours of sleep, and that was enough. The first order of business would be to get her back to following something like a routine; one that involved sleeping at night and being awake during the day and eating meals at regular intervals. The sort of thing that people took for granted until suddenly you find yourself incapable of accomplishing even the most basic tasks.

Anya knocked on Lexa's door, and when there was no answer, she walked right in, stubbing her toe on something buried in the rubble as she made her way to the bed again. She sat on the edge and rubbed her hand on Lexa's back in slow, gentle circles, trying to ease her from wherever she was back into reality. 

Lexa shifted and made a sound somewhere between a whimper and a groan, and finally her eyes peeled open. 

"Good morning," Anya said. "How do you want your eggs?"

Lexa considered her for a moment, maybe weighing whether it was worth it to try and argue with her, whether there was any point in saying that she wasn't hungry. Finally she said, "Scrambled," an answer for which Anya was grateful because she wasn't sure she could actually pull off any other kind of egg. 

"What do you want on your toast?" When Lexa just looked at her, she added, "There's butter, peanut butter, and I think maybe some jelly."

"Grape?"

"Is that what you want?"

"No. I hate grape."

Anya couldn't help smiling. "Okay, no jelly. Butter or peanut butter?"

"One of each."

_Good girl,_ Anya wanted to say, but Lexa wasn't a dog. "Okay. I'll make breakfast, you..." She frowned. Telling her to get dressed might be more than she could get her mind around, given the fact that her wardrobe had become a floordrobe. "Make your bed," she decided. 

"Yes ma'am," Lexa said. 

Anya rolled her eyes, but didn't argue. She just got up and went back to the kitchen, making them breakfast and wondering if Lexa would actually appear of her own volition or if she would have to retrieve her. But as she was searching the cupboards for plates, Lexa came in and opened the one door she hadn't tried, and there were the dishes. "Why...?" she started, but didn't bother to finish. The organization of the kitchen was... well, she wasn't sure that calling it organization wasn't giving it too much credit. It was like Lexa's father had just seen the boxes that were labeled Kitchen, opened one up, and just started at one side of the kitchen and worked his way to the other without any consideration as to whether things were any in a place that made any kind of logical sense. 

"Thanks," she said, and Lexa nodded. She put food onto plates and set them at the table, and Lexa got utensils from the drawer and set them neatly beside the plates. Anya poured them both orange juice because it was what was in the fridge, and then sat down.

She tried not to watch Lexa eat, because she didn't want to make her uncomfortable. But she couldn't help glancing over occasionally, watching as Lexa methodically worked her way through the meal, taking a bite and chewing for what seemed like forever before swallowing, over and over again until the food was gone. She didn't seem to enjoy it; the expression on her face was one of someone who had to perform some distasteful chore, but at least it got fuel into her body. When she was done, she got up and put the dishes in the dishwasher, then stood staring out the window above the sink.

"I thought we might put your room back together," Anya said. "Make it a little bit less hazardous."

Lexa shrugged, then turned to look at her. "If you want."

So then went to Lexa's room, and slowly got everything picked up and put away, the furniture back in its proper places, and Anya made sure to leave a space for a bed (she assumed that Captain Woods would get some kind of rollaway cot thing from some surplus storage room somewhere) for herself. The laundry all got washed because Anya wasn't sure what was clean and what was dirty, and then she helped Lexa to get it back into drawers, taking the bottom one for herself. 

"How long are you staying?" Lexa asked, the first attempt at conversation she'd initiated since Anya's arrival. 

"As long as you need me to," Anya said. 

"I—" Lexa started to object, but then she just deflated. "Okay."

"Okay," Anya agreed. By the time they finished with the room, it was time for lunch, where she tried (and mostly failed) to get Lexa to give her some idea of what she might like to eat. She decided that she would just have to wing it when she got to the grocery store, and pick out things that looked good, or that she remembered Lexa eating in the dining hall. "Your father said you have a credit card for emergencies," she said, "and—"

Lexa didn't even wait for her to finish. She just got up, retrieved her wallet, and handed it over to Anya. 

"You need to come with me," Anya said. "I'm not going to forge your signature."

"I give you permission," Lexa said. 

"They'll ask for ID," Anya pointed out.

"Don't go to commissary."

"I don't know where anything else is."

"GPS."

"Lexa."

"No."

Anya sighed, and decided that she was going to have to pick her battles, and that this wasn't one that she was needed to fight right now. "Fine," she said. If all else failed, she would just use her debit card and make Captain Woods reimburse her. "What are you going to do while I'm gone?"

"Nap," Lexa said.

"Okay," Anya replied, not sure if it was okay or not. But Lexa only had a few small meals under her belt, and she'd done more this morning than in the previous week, so she would cut her some slack. Maybe she'd earned a nap. "I'll be back soon."

Lexa went to the door and grabbed a set of keys that hung from a hook there. "My father hates it when the door is unlocked," she said. "You'll have to take my key until he can get one made for you."

Anya wasn't sure if it was a good sign or a bad one that Lexa seemed to have completely accepted that she was going to be here for a while. "Thanks," she said, clipping the keys to her own with the carabiner that held them together. "I'll be back soon." She grimaced, realizing she'd already said that, but Lexa either didn't notice or didn't care.

The shopping took far longer than she wanted it to, and cost far more than she wanted it to, but at least she would be working with a fully stocked kitchen when she had to tackle dinner. Not that she knew a whole hell of a lot about cooking, but she could make a few things, and fresh was better than prepackaged thaw and serve stuff, even if it was basic. She would just have to figure it out as she went. She was pretty sure that it wouldn't really matter what she put in front of Lexa; she would eat it because she was told to, and it would probably all just taste like ash on her tongue.

Poor kid.

When Captain Woods arrived home, it was after they'd already eaten dinner. Lexa tried to retreat to her room to get away from him, but her path of escape was blocked by the fact that he (along with someone that Anya didn't recognize, but then she didn't recognize _anyone_ so that was hardly surprising) were rolling a folded bed through the door and down the short hall. He twisted the knob of the door and pushed it open, and Anya was glad that they'd gotten things cleaned up because she wasn't sure how he would have reacted to the disaster that the room had been this morning, and she didn't really want to be caught in the middle of whatever battle it might have led to.

Lexa just stood, stiff and still, in the middle of the living room. Anya stayed with her, assuming that they would figure out where to put it, since she'd created a spot specifically. Given the fact that they emerged a few minutes later without having called out to ask, and the stranger left without even bothering to say goodbye, she guessed that if they hadn't figured it out, that was her problem.

She watched as Lexa maintained her statue-like state, watched as Captain Woods looked at his daughter, then at the dishes in the kitchen, then at Anya, like he didn't quite know what to do with any of it. 

_You could fucking ask her how she's doing,_ she thought, wishing that it was possible to actually force a thought into someone else's head. _You could actually put in a little effort, give some indication that you care._ Because she was pretty sure that he _did_ care. He just didn't have the first clue how to show it, and seemed to be completely unable to get over the possibility that whatever attempts he made to forge a connection would be rejected. 

"There's leftovers in the fridge," Anya said finally, when they'd all stood there for just a little too long in silence. "You're welcome to them."

"Thank you," he said, and in the fraction of a second that his attention was fully focused on Anya (or at least appeared to be) Lexa took the opportunity to make a break for it. Anya expected to hear the door slam shut, but then she heard Lexa's scuffing footsteps stop, and turn, and come back, brushing past her father almost but not quite close enough to touch him, and for a second there was a flicker of something in the man's eyes – uncertainty bordering on fear, like he actually thought his daughter might attack him, or otherwise try to harm him.

She went to the dryer and dumped its contents out into a basket, then moved the last load from the washer to the dryer. She grabbed a set of sheets from the linen closet and put them on top of her clean laundry, then walked back to her room, chin up, eyes straight, jaw set. This time the door closed behind her, but not with a slam, just a click. Still, it seemed loud in this house that was so full of silence it almost echoed.

"Did she give you the credit card?" he asked.

"Yes," Anya said. "I did some shopping. She let me borrow her keys."

"I'll have one made for you," he said. "Even if you don't end up staying long, it won't hurt us to have a spare."

"Thank you," Anya said. The conversation was stilted, awkward, and finally she just sighed (inwardly) and went to check on Lexa.

She was staring at a t-shirt in consternation, holding it at arm's length and frowning. "This isn't mine," she said. "I don't know whose this is."

"It's not—" Anya started, but stopped at Lexa's quick shake of the head. "It's not mine either," she said. "Must be it got left in the washer or dryer at school and got mixed in with your stuff."

"Must be," Lexa said. "It's not mine."

"You can always bring it back next semester," Anya said, "put it in the lost and found."

"I'm not going back," Lexa said. 

Anya blinked. "What do you mean, you're not going back? You have to go—"

"I don't _have to_ do anything," Lexa said. "I don't want to, and I won't."

Anya again suppressed a sigh (she got the feeling she would be doing _a lot_ of that over the next few days, or weeks, however long she ended up here), but she didn't try to argue with her. Now wasn't the time. There were still several months to get things sorted out. It was a little late for her to try to transfer to another school for next semester, but if she really couldn't stand the thought... well, it was a possibility. So was a semester off, if it came to that. She was sure that the school would understand. The circumstances were pretty extenuating, after all.

"I won't," Lexa repeated. "It was never—" She shook her head. "You can't make me."

"I'm not going to try to make you," Anya said. "Okay? I'm not going to try to make you."

" _He_ will," Lexa said. 

"He's not here right now," Anya said. "It's just you and me, and no one's making anyone do anything they don't want to at the moment. Now are you going to fold that shirt or not?"

"It's not mine," Lexa said, and Anya wondered if she realized that that was the third time she'd said the same thing. Did she have any awareness at all of how far down she was, how out of it, how absent? Did she feel it, or was she just numb? 

"Here," Anya said, taking it from her and folding it up. "We'll start a pile of things that aren't yours, or that you don't want anymore," she said. "We can always give it to Goodwill or something." She set it on the top of a set of low shelves, which in probably any other house belonging to any other person, probably would have been covered in knick-knacks and photos and memorabilia, but in this house with this... shell of the girl that she'd once known, there was nothing. She watched as Lexa finished folding her laundry, and then as she put it away, everything placed just so in the drawers. 

"What do you want to do tomorrow?" Anya asked, when she got tired of watching Lexa sit on the edge of her bed, staring into space. "We could go somewhere."

"There's nowhere to go," Lexa said. "This place is... nowhere."

"Thanks for the earworm," Anya said wryly. She waited a second to see if Lexa would bite, if she would ask what earworm, but maybe she already knew, or probably she didn't care. She didn't volunteer to share, since really it was pretty dismal. _He's a real Nowhere Man, sitting in his Nowhere Land. Making all his Nowhere Plans for Nobody. Doesn't have a point of view, knows not where he's going to. Isn't he a bit like you and me?_

Anya wasn't used to being a nowhere person with nowhere plans, and it didn't sit right. She would go crazy in this house of silence and rage if she wasn't careful, but she also couldn't push Lexa too hard, too fast, or she would risk making things worse for both of them. Slow and steady wins the race and all that. So maybe tomorrow she could convince her to go for a walk. Get her some fresh air and vitamin D. Maybe it would help.

For now, though... she was just going to have to figure out how to live with the quiet, and the feeling that with Lexa right there, almost within arm's reach, she was more alone than she'd ever been in her entire life.

The next day she got up and went for a run, trusting that the still-sleeping Lexa would be all right without her for a little while, and came back and showered and made breakfast. Captain Woods ate with them, which led to a silent battle of wills between her and Lexa when it became clear that Lexa was going to try to escape to her room. Anya stared her down, and wonder of wonders, she actually somehow managed to convince her to stay put without ever saying a word. 

Once he'd left for work, Anya talked Lexa into going out, just for a little bit, even though she had no destination in mind. She figured they would find something interesting along the way... or just give up and turn back. Either way, she would count it a victory.

Their days fell into a pattern, with jogging early before the heat crept up, and three meals a day, and chores and a lot of stretches of quiet that were sometimes comfortable and sometimes not so much. It was mind-numbingly dull a lot of the time, but at least Lexa wasn't disappearing into herself constantly. At least she wasn't just sitting with her knees pulled up to her chest and her hair obscuring her face. 

Anya rarely saw Lexa's father, and she decided that for the most part that suited her. He made sure that she had money to buy groceries, and gas for her car on the rare occasions that Lexa actually allowed herself to be talked into going somewhere they couldn't walk to. It certainly wasn't an ideal situation, but it was a relatively livable one.

"Seriously, though," Anya said one day. "Don't you want to go _do_ something this summer? Were you seriously just going to sit around for four months doing nothing? Just staring at the same four walls and watching reruns on TV?"

"We don't watch reruns on TV," Lexa pointed out, and she wasn't wrong. They'd watched a few things, but everything seemed to either irritate or upset Lexa, and even though she tried to cover it up, Anya could read it in the way that she tensed and clenched her jaw, the way that her eyes narrowed and her nostrils flared. It wasn't worth setting her off, so the screen stayed dark. "And there are more than four walls."

Anya rolled her eyes. "Are you being literal because you don't want to talk about it, or are you actively trying to annoy me?"

"There's no point in talking about it," Lexa said. "There's nowhere to go. There's nothing to do."

"I have a car," Anya said. "We could go anywhere. Do anything."

"What do _you_ want to do?" Lexa asked. "If you didn't think you had to be here, where would you be? What would you be doing?"

"I don't think I have to be here," Anya said. _I **know** I do._ But she couldn't say that. "I want to be here, Lexa. This is... It's more than a person should have to handle on their own."

"That doesn't answer my question," Lexa said.

"Pot and kettle," Anya replied. "But fine. If I could be anywhere, do anything right now... I think I would go camping. Find somewhere nice and green and spend a few days away from everything." She knew that Lexa liked camping. It was one of the things that they'd bonded over... and one of the things that Costia had never been a big fan of. She tried, she really did, but when it came right down to it, she liked to have access to amenities. The nice thing was that when she did come along on hikes and other outdoorsy activities, she didn't complain the entire time about everything. She grumbled a little bit sometimes, but _everyone_ grumbled a little bit sometimes about one thing or another. She'd always been respectful of the fact that it was something that Lexa liked, and she'd done her best not to take away from that.

"I don't have any gear," Lexa said. 

"One, I doubt that's true," Anya said. "Maybe you don't know where it is in this house, but that doesn't seem like the kind of thing that your father would just get rid of. Two, I packed stuff in my car, because if I was going on a road trip I was sure as hell going to be prepared, and three," she ticked off her points on her fingers, "we are literally on a military base, and your father is an officer. Do you think for one second that if we asked, he couldn't arrange for us to borrow whatever we needed?"

"That's not how it works," Lexa said. "They don't just—"

"They do if you know the right people," Anya said. "But fine. You don't want to ask your father for anything, I get it. That doesn't change points one and two."

"Where would we go?" Lexa asked. 

"I've been looking online," Anya said. "I found a few places that are relatively nearby. Do you want to take a look?" She opened up her laptop and brought up her browser to show Lexa the sites, but Lexa eyes glazed over almost instantly. 

"You can go wherever you want," she said. 

"You mean _we_ can go," Anya said. "I won't go without you."

"And I won't go with you." 

There was no point in arguing. All of the fight had gone out of Lexa, all of the spirit, and she was done for the day. Pushing it would just lead to her digging in her heels, going limp like a toddler having a tantrum, and otherwise becoming immovable. Tomorrow would be a new day, and Anya would try again. But for today, she had to let it go.

Tomorrow _was_ a new day... but not a good one. A letter arrived from the school, but since everything went to a box and they hadn't checked it, Lexa's father got hold of it first, and apparently decided to take it upon himself to open it. They were on the couch – Lexa poking at a game on her phone and Anya reading – when the door crashed open, startling them both. Anya was half off the couch, ready to defend them from whoever this intruder was when it registered that it wasn't an intruder at all. Still, from the look in his eyes she thought there might be a chance she'd need to get between the two of them. "What the hell is this?" he demanded, shoving the letter in Lexa's direction. 

"I don't know," Lexa said after a quick glance at him. "Why don't you read it and find out?"

"Don't play games with me, Lexa," he snapped. "I am not in the mood."

"It's not a game," Lexa said, and Anya shivered at the echo of the words from her first night back. "Does it look like anyone is having fun?"

She cringed. It really looked like he might reach out and grab Lexa, pick her up and shake her until her head rattled, and she wouldn't let that happen. She knew that he didn't have to let her stay, that he could tell her to pack her bags and go at any time... but if she did, she was taking Lexa with her. She wasn't going to let anything more happen to that girl. Not if there was anything that she could do to stop it.

"Do you think you're funny?" Captain Woods asked. "Do you think any of this is funny?"

Lexa's eyes narrowed, but she didn't answer, and the silence stretched as father and daughter glared at each other, each daring the other to say the first word, make the first move. Finally Anya couldn't take it anymore. "What is it?" she asked. "What's in the letter?"

"I assume it's the letter that I have to sign to confirm my withdrawal from the university," Lexa said, her voice calm – too calm – and almost cheerful. Like she was enjoying this, or at least she was enjoying taunting her father, and Anya had to assume that she knew how thin the ice she was treading was, but she didn't seem to care, which made the entire situation that much more volatile. "I wasn't expecting any other mail. And it did come addressed to me, didn't it? Isn't it a federal offense to tamper with someone else's mail?"

"I'm your father."

"I'm an adult," Lexa countered. "I'm eighteen. I get to make my own decisions... and open my own mail. You had – have – no right."

"As long as you're living under my roof—"

Anya cringed again, maybe not so inwardly this time. Now wasn't the time for that argument, and couldn't he see that? Yes, when she'd first arrived she'd used that same argument with him, but that was just to get Lexa to do the things that she needed to do to _survive_. Now that she was a little making an effort to keep living... it would only drive her away.

Lexa stood up. "I'll go pack." She got up and left, went to her room, and neither of them made any move to stop her. Anya didn't know what Captain Woods was thinking, but she stayed because she feared she might need to block him from going after her.

She looked at him, saw that the hand that was holding the letter was shaking, and she almost reached out to touch him, to try to offer him some kind of comfort, but she stopped herself because she didn't think he would accept it, for one, and because she wasn't sure she actually had any to give, for another. "I'll talk to her," she said. "She's—can you really blame her for not wanting to go back? She spent the past year practically inseparable from C—from her girlfriend there, and now she's gone, and the place will be filled with memories. Maybe she just needs some time away, to clear her head, to heal her broken heart."

"Hearts are muscles," Captain Woods said. "They can't break."

Anya clenched her jaw. "Just give me some time to talk to her, to talk her down. I'll – we'll figure something out. Rather than withdrawing, maybe she can just take a semester off. Just to give her a little time to—"

"No," he said. "She doesn't get to just give up. She doesn't get to quit. That's not how this works." He looked her straight in the eyes then, and the next words that came out of his mouth were clearly a threat. "Remind her of our agreement," he said. "If she signs this letter, then she'll be signing a very different one tomorrow."

Anya frowned. "I'll tell her," she said, although it was the last thing she wanted to do, even not knowing what the agreement was. "Just..." She reached for the letter. "I'll handle it. We'll figure it out. She's not thinking clearly." _And you're an asshole for expecting her to._ "We'll think of something."

"She knows the alternative."

Anya sighed, easing the envelope from his clenched fingers. "I'll handle it," she repeated, and went to Lexa's room, closing and locking the door behind her (which she'd forbidden Lexa to do, and surprisingly the younger girl had listened, but now it felt necessary). Lexa had a suitcase out and was filling it with clothing, trying to cram everything from her drawers into it without much care for doing it neatly. 

"Hey," Anya said, sitting on the edge of the bed and closing the case. "Let's talk."

"There's nothing to talk about," Lexa said. "He said that as long as I'm living under his roof, I live by his rules. Or he implied it. And I'm sick of it. So I'm leaving."

"Where are you going to go?" Anya asked.

"Where do you want to go?" Lexa replied. "Didn't you say we could go anywhere we wanted?"

Anya bit the inside of her lip. "I did," she agreed. "But can we just talk for a minute?"

Lexa looked at her and seemed to deflate. "If you're going to try to convince me to stay, I don't want to hear it," she said. "If you're going to tell me that I have to go back, that I'm not allowed to—" She stopped, sat on Anya's bed because there was no room on her own with the suitcase there. "I told you," she said. "Didn't I? I told you he wouldn't let me."

"You did," Anya said. "So we have to come up with another plan."

Lexa shook her head. "This is my plan."

"This isn't a plan," Anya said. "This is a reaction. A plan involves knowing what the next step is, and probably a few steps after that."

"You said I didn't have to go back," Lexa said. "You said that you wouldn't make me."

"And I'm not," Anya said. "I'm just saying that packing your suitcase and taking off without even having a destination in mind isn't a plan. I'm saying that I will help you come up with something that _is_ a plan that works for both of you." She saw Lexa's jaw clench. "I'm not the enemy, Lexa. I'm on your side. I want what's best for you, and I don't think taking off like this is. So let's figure this out."

"I'm not going back," Lexa said. "I can't. I won't."

"Okay," Anya said. "Then—" She stopped. "Your father told me to tell you to remember your agreement. That if you signed the withdrawal letter, you would be signing very different papers tomorrow."

Lexa stiffened, going very still, and Anya prepared herself to block her if she made a move to go find her father, because whatever came after that would be ugly, she was sure. But then she just relaxed again... or not relaxed, exactly, but she stopped looking like she was ready to attack. "Fuck him," she said. " _Fuck_ him."

"What agreement?" Anya asked. "What was he talking about?"

"My senior year, I was still trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I was... my entire life had always been laid out for me. I thought maybe I could take some time off, figure out what I actually wanted from life. But _she_ wanted me to go to college, to follow her wherever she went, and my father wanted me to enlist. So that was my choice. That was the agreement. Either I went to college or I joined the military. Didn't have to be the Air Force, he said. He would at least give me that much choice. But it was one or the other." 

"Oh," Anya said. "And you chose college."

"I chose _her_ ," Lexa said. "College... I knew I wanted to go eventually, but I was still figuring things out. I thought maybe I would go somewhere else. Somewhere... I was thinking of going back to Hawaii, going to school there. But _she_ didn't want to be so far away from everyone, and she convinced me that long-distance couldn't work, and she was probably right about that. So I applied where she applied, and we ended up where we ended up, and now that's over and... now I don't know anymore."

"Do you think taking a semester off would help?" Anya asked. "Would that give you the time that you needed to figure things out?"

"He won't let me," Lexa said. "You heard him."

"I would convince him," Anya said. "If I had to, I would convince him." _Or I would just take you away from here and away from him so that he couldn't force you into anything you didn't want._ But that would be a last resort. Because she didn't actually have any way to support Lexa, really, and the girl wasn't in a place where she would be able to support herself. She could manage it for a semester if she had to, but after that... They needed a plan.

"I don't know," Lexa said. 

"And you definitely don't want to enlist." It came out as a statement rather than a question, because Anya was pretty confident she knew the answer, but she still figured she would put it out there, get Lexa's confirmation.

"No," Lexa said. "I don't."

"Okay. So we need to figure something else out. A semester off is a possibility, if I can convince your dad. In order to do that, I think we need there to be some kind of plan for what happens after that. If you don't want to go back to school... is it school in general, or just the idea of going back to the school that you chose because of her?" Lexa shrugged, which wasn't helpful. "Is transferring to another school a possibility?"

"It's too late."

"Maybe for the fall," Anya said, "but if you're actively looking into transferring, it would make the argument to allow you to take a semester off stronger, I think."

"He'll tell me that I need to stay in school for that semester, and then transfer in the spring," Lexa said. 

Anya sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose. Lexa knew her father better than Anya did, so she couldn't really argue with her that he would say anything different. She was also pretty sure that she would strike out in trying to convince Captain Woods that he was being unreasonable with expecting his daughter to make any kind of life-changing decision when she was barely a month out from what was, at best, the _second_ most traumatizing event of her life, and quite possibly the first. Lexa didn't talk much about her mother's death, and it hadn't happened when she was so young that she hardly remembered her, but it seemed like she'd processed it, at least on some level, and moved past it. With Costia... she'd wrapped her whole life around one person, let herself be pulled into a dream of the future that wasn't entirely of her own creation, and now... now she was left trying to pick up the pieces and figure out what could be salvaged from the wreckage of that dream.

"What do you want to do?" Anya asked finally. "Not about school. Right now. What do you want to do?"

"I want to leave," Lexa said. "I want to go somewhere else."

"Does it have to be right now? Would tomorrow be soon enough?"

Lexa frowned, but she nodded, just the faintest dip of her chin. 

"Okay. I'm going to go figure out supplies for this camping trip we were thinking about taking. Do you want to come with me?"

Lexa started to shake her head, then stopped, and nodded again. "I'll go look in the basement, see if any of the gear is there."

"Good girl," Anya said, and was grateful when Lexa didn't get irritated. She got up and laid her hand briefly on Lexa's shoulder, then went to go tell Lexa's father the temporary plan while Lexa went to go see what she could find. 

He wasn't happy about it, but Anya didn't really give him the opportunity to try to veto. She just told him that she and Lexa were talking about what was going to happen next year, and that right now she wasn't in a place to make any kind of decision about anything. He should keep the withdrawal letter somewhere safe, because if that was the decision she decided to make, she had every right as an adult to make it. For now, though, she wasn't signing it. 

He finally just shook his head in surrender and told her where she could find some of the things they needed, and handed her some money for buying the things that they didn't have. "Just don't let her do anything stupid," he said. 

"I wasn't planning on it," Anya told him, and went to go help Lexa.


	5. Chapter 5

The next day they set out early, heading for a campsite that Anya had booked that offered hiking trails and mountain views and even a lake. They had plans to stay for a few days, but with the possibility of extending it longer if they wanted to, as long as their supplies held out. They hiked in silence, not quite side by side because the trail didn't really allow it, occasionally reaching to help each other as they struggled on some of the rougher bits under the burden of their packs. Once they set up camp, everything would be easier.

"I could have gotten us a site that we could drive to," Anya said, grabbing Lexa's elbow and bracing so that she could lever herself up.

"That's cheating," Lexa grunted, not letting go immediately even when she was on level ground again. 

"I figured you would say that." Anya smiled, and she thought she saw the faintest light in Lexa's eyes, the tiniest spark, but maybe it was just a trick of the sun filtering through the trees, because her lips didn't even twitch. "It's not much farther, I don't think."

"You don't think," Lexa grumbled, but she kept up with Anya, and didn't immediately collapse when they finally found the little marker with the number for their site. They took a break to have a snack (protein bars and water) and then set up the tent and began to gather wood for kindling. The site had already been stocked with split logs for a fire, which was a nice perk of not just setting up somewhere random in the middle of the woods. 

When everything was set up, they went to go find the lake (and the bathrooms, which was another perk of camping in a campsite). There were a few other people in the area, but it was the middle of the week so mostly things were quiet, and people kept to themselves. "And none of them look like serial killers," Anya joked.

Lexa stopped, frozen in place for half a second before she recovered and kept walking. "Always a good thing," she said flatly, and it was only then that Anya remembered that it had been Costia who had been paranoid about their neighbors on one trip they'd made... had it only been weeks ago? It couldn't have been more than a couple of months... and not one of their other companions. 

"I'm—" Anya started to say, but Lexa cut her off.

"Don't," she said. "Okay? Just don't."

"Okay," Anya said. "Look, there's a sign for the lake."

"I don't feel like swimming," Lexa said. 

"We can still go see it," Anya said.

"I don't want to."

"Lexa." Anya looked at her, wishing she could see inside her skull and figure out what the problem was, what was going on in her head, what switch had flipped where she went from being kind of almost okay to suddenly unwilling to do anything. Had it been the reminder of Costia? Anya hadn't meant to, but talking about anything that had happened since they met was hazardous, considering that she'd mostly known Lexa and Costia together. Anything that she remembered about Lexa was likely to have Costia attached to it somehow. 

"I don't want to," she repeated. "Let's just go back."

"And do what?" Anya asked. "Sit around and do nothing? We could have done that at the house."

"You're the one who—"

"No," Anya interrupted. "You wanted to leave. You wanted to get away from your father. So we left. We're here. I want to go see the lake."

"So go without me," Lexa said. "I can find my own way back."

"No," Anya said again. "You're coming with me." She knew that Lexa was perfectly capable of following the trail back to their site. She knew that if Lexa did go back, she was likely to just retreat into their tent and hide for a while. She knew that if she let her go, it would _probably_ be fine. 

But she wasn't absolutely 100% sure, and that sliver of her that had doubts about Lexa's intentions if she was given the opportunity to be alone was loud enough that she was willing to turn requests into commands. 

She held out her hand, physically reaching across the space between them, and she could have taken a step and grabbed her, but instead she just left her hand out, willing Lexa to close the gap, to acquiesce. Finally, she did. She pointedly ignored Anya's outstretched hand, but she started moving in the right direction again, and within a few minutes they were standing beside a lake, looking out across the water. "You sure you don't feel like swimming?" Anya asked. 

"I don't have my suit."

"There's no one around," Anya said. 

Lexa's eyebrows went up. "I am not going skinny-dipping with you," she said. 

Anya rolled her eyes. "That's not what I was going to suggest," she said. "I was thinking more along the lines of, 'There's no one around, so if we go in in our underwear no one is likely to notice or care.'"

"Oh," Lexa said. "I don't think so."

"We could just go wading, then," Anya said, "or go back and get our suits." 

"Do what you want," Lexa said. But when Anya reached out and dragged her down onto the bench beside her and plucked at the laces of her boots until they were untied, she didn't object, and so she tugged them off and lined both pairs up neatly with their backpacks, and nudged Lexa gently toward the water.

They stepped in, and the water was cold, but not too cold; refreshing as the afternoon sun pounded down on them. She realized then that she probably should have put on sunscreen; they would just have to be careful how long they spent out of the shade of the trees. She felt a prickling at her feet, and looked down to see that they had been swarmed by tiny fish. 

"Look," she said. "Isn't there – or wasn't there – some kind of weird fad where people went to have little fish eat the calluses from their feet?"

Lexa's nose wrinkled. "Seriously?"

"I think I remember seeing something about it," Anya said. 

"Was it in Japan? Weird things always seem to come from Japan."

"I don't remember," Anya said. "I would say we could Google it, but I have my doubts about the wifi out here. Or the phone signal at all."

"We're not _that_ far from civilization," Lexa pointed out. "There's still toilets."

"And showers if we want them," Anya said. "I figured we could get away without having to truly rough it. Sort of ease ourselves into things."

Lexa nodded, take another step out into the water, then another, until she was in over her knees and the gentle waves threatened to soak the hem of her shorts. She crossed her arms and stared out over the water, the breeze tugging at strands of hair that had pulled loose, and Anya wished that she'd brought a camera to capture the moment. She wasn't half the photographer that Lexa was, but she could manage well enough to capture a moment when it composed itself for her like this. But she'd even left her phone back on shore, and after a minute the moment passed, and Lexa turned to wade back. "I'm tired," she said. 

"Okay," Anya said. "We'll go back."

When they got back to the campsite, Lexa immediately retreated to the tent even though it was almost certainly sweltering. Anya thought about following her to ask what was wrong, but she decided to just give her a little space. To give them both a little space, really, because weeks of near-constant vigilance had left her tired and burned out.

Lexa emerged sometime after Anya started dinner, walking straight past her without saying a word. 

"Where are you going?" Anya asked.

"Bathroom," Lexa said. "Is that okay with you?"

"Yes," Anya said. "Food will be ready when you get back."

Lexa didn't seem to hear her, or if she did she ignored her. Anya was getting used to that. And tired of it, but it wasn't a battle that was worth fighting. She just let her go, and was more than a little surprised when she came back a few minutes later at almost a run. Anya grabbed her as she skidded to a stop, gripping her arms. "What's wrong?" she asked, looking behind her to figure out what was chasing her, because it seemed the most likely explanation. 

"Shit," Lexa said. "Shit shit shit shit shit."

"Lexa, _what_?" Anya demanded. "I can't help if you don't tell me what's wrong."

"Damn it," she said. " _Damn it_... I didn't... I wasn't keeping track. I forgot. I don't even... _Shit._."

"Oh." Anya pulled Lexa against her, holding her tight because she was shaking, but when Lexa stiffened she let her go again. "It's okay," she said. "Here. It's okay." She ducked into the tent and rummaged through her bag, where she always had emergency supplies in what was probably intended to be a pencil case, and brought it out to Lexa. "It's okay," she said again. "Just go clean up."

"I don't have anything!" Lexa said. 

"In the pouch," Anya said, trying to be as patient as she could when part of her just wanted to roll her eyes. She was acting like this wasn't something that happened every month, like this was the first time... Which made her realize how much of a disaster that almost certainly would have been, given how epically awful Lexa and her father were at communicating. "Do you need me to grab you something clean to put on?" 

"I didn't pack any, any, any..." She shook her head, her face twisted in a scowl as whatever word she was looking for failed to make its way past her tongue, and finally she just turned and walked away, back toward the bathrooms again. 

Anya finished making dinner, which Lexa barely touched and left her to clean it up as well. When Anya finally went into the tent to see how she was, she found her curled up in a ball on the air mattress that they would have to share (they hadn't found any twin-size mattresses, and the tent wasn't big enough to hold more than one full-size one), her eyes closed and her expression pinched.

"Painkiller," Anya said. "You don't have any painkiller."

Lexa nodded. 

"I've got some ibuprofen," Anya said. "Hold on."

"Won't help," Lexa said. "Not enough."

"Even if it only helps a little, it's better than nothing at all, right?" Anya asked. She retrieved it from her bag and handed the pills (twice the regular dose but she knew that it was far less than what would be lethal, and it was the best she could do) to Lexa along with a bottle of water. She watched as she swallowed them, crouched and feeling helpless. "What else can I do?"

"Nothing," Lexa said. 

"If I'd known..."

"How could you have known?" Lexa asked, cracking an eye open. "I didn't know."

"If I'd known, I would have packed a hot water bottle or something," Anya said. "Sometimes that helps me."

"It's not even... it's my back," Lexa said, "and my hips. I don't know why. It just happens some months."

"Have you ever tried having someone rub your back?" Anya asked. "Like a massage? It's muscle tension, right? It could help."

"Do you see a massage therapist around here?" Lexa asked.

"No," Anya said, "but I see someone in pain and someone willing to help, and I'm confident enough in my skills to say that I don't think I'll make it worse, even if I don't make it better."

Lexa grunted, but she rolled onto her stomach, and didn't object when Anya pushed up the back of her shirt to expose her skin, and edged the elastic waist of her pajama bottoms down her hips a little to give herself room to work. She knelt at Lexa's side, smoothing lotion (another camping must-have, as far as she was concerned, because days of hiking in the sun, covered in sweat and grit, tended to dry you out) over her skin, and began to work at the muscles, trying to ease the tension there, trying to get Lexa to relax and stop fighting against her own body. 

It took time, but finally she heard Lexa sigh, her breathing evening out, her shoulders easing down from where they'd been drawn up by her ears. Anya slid her hands up her back, over her shoulder blades and down the length of her spine to her hips, long, slow strokes that left Lexa finally, at long last, relaxed.

"There," Anya whispered. "How's that?"

"Better," Lexa admitted, her voice muffled against her pillow. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," Anya said. "Are you going to come out, or should I bring a s'more in to you?"

"You don't have to," Lexa said. 

"Yes I do," Anya said. "I may not be a doctor, but I know that chocolate is definitely part of the prescription in situations like these." 

"I'll get up," Lexa said.

"Only if it's not going to hurt you," Anya told her. 

"I don't think it will." Lexa rolled over and sat up, and then let Anya help her stand up. "I think I'm okay."

"If it starts hurting again, just let me know." Anya exited the tent, making sure to zip the screen behind them so that they wouldn't end up bedding down with mosquitoes. She retrieved the graham crackers and chocolate and marshmallows, and then found a good stick for toasting them on. "You're not one of those people who likes their marshmallows turned into charcoal briquettes, are you?" she asked. "Because if so, you're on your own."

"I can do it," Lexa said. "You don't have to..." She sighed. "You don't have to baby me," she said, sounding deflated. 

"You're more than welcome to it, then," Anya said. "But how do you know I'm not just being selfish, giving myself an excuse to sit near the fire?"

"You can sit as close to the fire as you want," Lexa said. "I'm not going to stop you."

Anya looked at her, then handed her the marshmallow stick and found another, spearing another couple and holding them close, but not too close, to the flames. She watched Lexa out of the corner of her eye, the concentration (or maybe it was lingering pain) on her face, all of her focus on making sure that the surface of her marshmallows was a perfectly even golden brown. When they were done, they broke off sections of the Hershey's and squashed them between two graham crackers, and for a second Anya thought she saw the tiniest hint of a smile before Lexa's face went blank and distant again. 

When they were done, they put out the fire for the night. They could have banked it, but Anya didn't want to take any chances; it just meant they might have a wait a little longer for it to be hot enough to cook breakfast over in the morning. She didn't think Lexa, whose appetite was still largely non-existent, would care. They made a trip to the bathroom, and then retired to the tent, zipping it behind them.

Anya listened to Lexa's breathing in the dark, waiting for it to even out into the patterns of sleep that had become so familiar over the past few weeks, although not at this close a proximity, but they never did. Lexa was holding herself unnaturally still, like she thought that her sleeping act would be more convincing if she kept her body rigidly away from Anya's, but that wasn't how it worked. 

Finally she must have realized that she wasn't fooling Anya any more than she was fooling herself, and she rolled to face her. Anya couldn't make out her features in the dark, but she could feel the soft brush of air against her own lips, and smell the faint mint of her breath. She hadn't realized they were quite that close, and if she'd had anywhere to move she would have, because something felt off, the air between them charged and she didn't understand why.

And then she felt Lexa's lips against hers, felt her reach out, the weight of her hand landing on Anya's side, her fingers clenching in the material of her sleeping bag, bringing their bodies together... and she found room to move into, made space to move away from her. "Lexa," she said softly, "don't."

She felt Lexa sit up, and she probably would have stood if she hadn't become entangled in her sleeping bag. "Fucking goddamnit!" she swore as she struggled with it. "Stupid fucking—"

"Hey," Anya said. "Lexa. It's okay. Take a deep breath."

"I don't want to take a deep fucking breath," Lexa snarled. "I want to go home."

"I don't think you really want to do that either," Anya said. "Please. Just calm down, just for a second. I need you to listen to me." She was honestly surprised when Lexa stopped thrashing around, and she didn't know how long it would last, so she took advantage of her stillness while she had it. "I'm not what you want," she said. "If I thought for a second that I was... maybe things would be different. But I'm not."

Lexa didn't say anything, which felt like all the confirmation that Anya needed. "I care about you, and I will keep caring about you, and taking care of you, for as long as you need me to. But that's not part of it. That's not going to happen. Because I refuse to be something that you use to beat yourself up with later. _Verstehst du?_ "

She still didn't say anything, but she laid back down, settled back on her side of the air mattress, and it was awkward and would probably be worse in the morning, but at least she wasn't trying to run. Unless she was just biding her time...

Anya knew that she wouldn't sleep well that night, if at all.

Except she did sleep, and woke up in the morning drenched in sweat as the sun soaked through the nylon walls and turned the small space into a sauna. The place next to her was empty, and her heart was immediately in her throat. She scrambled out of her sleeping bag and clawed at the zipper, yanking it open and stumbling out into the morning light.

Her legs went weak with relief when she saw Lexa sitting by the fire, poking at a pan that was set on the grate over it. She looked up, and although she didn't smile, she didn't glare either. "Morning," she said. "Breakfast isn't ready yet."

"That's okay," Anya said, turning to zip the screen over the opening so that it could air out a little. "Thank you for starting it."

"I assumed you would be hungry."

"You assumed right," Anya said. "Remember to make enough for both of us."

"I'm not stupid," Lexa said. "And I'm not a child. I know how to take care of myself."

_Know how? Maybe. Have been? Not even a little bit,_ Anya thought, but she didn't say it because she didn't want to get the day off any more on the wrong foot than it already was. She wondered if she should bring up what had happened the night before, try to clear the air, but in the end she decided that it was probably better to just let it be. If Lexa brought it up, fine. Otherwise, just let it be an awkward moment that had happened and was now in the past. Forgiven (not that there was anything to forgive) and forgotten (not that that was likely either...), or something like it.

She ate the scrambled eggs and toast that Lexa had made, impressed by her ability to get the bread evenly browned without any evidence of scorching. Maybe the almost unnatural stillness that had settled over her in the last few weeks had its uses. 

"What do you want to do today?" she asked. "How are you feeling?"

"I'm fine," Lexa said, as if she hadn't been curled up in a fetal position in pain yesterday. "And I don't know. What do you want to do?"

"Is swimming out? It's supposed to be pretty hot today."

Lexa shrugged. "It's not like I need to worry about sharks smelling blood in the water," she said. "I'll be fine."

"Okay. We could do a hike while it's still cool, and then swim later."

"Whatever you want," Lexa said. 

"Did you bring your camera?"

Lexa shrugged, which wasn't an answer, but Anya let it go. There was only so far she could push before Lexa started pushing back or shutting down, and she didn't really want to deal with either one right now. If Lexa wanted to take pictures, there was always the camera on her phone. It didn't have all of the bells and whistles of her other cameras, but it got the job done in a pinch. If she didn't... well, sometimes it was better to just live life in the moment, right? Without trying to capture it and preserve it.

After they ate they cleaned up and changed, and then headed out on one of the trails. Anya took the lead, not because she knew where she was going but because Lexa didn't seem to have much in the way of forward momentum; she was content to be pulled along in Anya's wake, so to speak. The morning passed with hardly a word between them, and after a quick lunch they headed down to the water, wading more than swimming as their food settled. Seeing Lexa in her swimsuit, it was clear the toll that her lack of appetite was taking on her body – she was still too-sharp angles rather than curves. Not to a degree that was dangerous, but the difference was significant enough to be noticeable. Which meant she would have to try harder to make sure that Lexa was getting enough calories into her body to sustain her.

They ended up staying a few extra days, with a trip into town for a few extra supplies, just because Lexa didn't want to go home. Anya didn't really blame her, though. She knew that once they went back, they would have to deal with her father, which also meant confronting the question of what shape Lexa's immediate future was going to take. 

She'd been thinking about it, and there didn't seem to be any good answer. Lexa was adamant that she wasn't going to go back to school next semester, and Anya didn't really blame her. The memories would still be too close, too raw, and it would likely just set her up for failure. Enlisting was not the answer, and transferring might be an option but it was too late to do that for next semester. Which left them basically out of options... unless maybe she could figure out how to pull a few strings, or get her parents to pull them for her. But it was a longshot, and she would still have to get Lexa to buy in.

As they sat by the fire one night, toasting marshmallows again, Anya decided that they couldn't avoid it forever. She risked shattering the fragile peace they'd built by bringing it up, but maybe if she could ease into it...

"If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?" she asked. 

Lexa didn't answer right away and Anya started to wonder if maybe she hadn't heard her. But then, just when she was about to ask again, she said, "Australia."

"Australia?"

"Yes."

"Can I ask why?"

Again, silence, but not as long this time. "No," Lexa said finally. 

"But that's where you would go, if you could go anywhere?"

"Yes."

"Okay," Anya said.

"Can I ask why?" 

The inflection was so obviously an imitation of Anya's question, she couldn't help laughing. "No," she said. "Not yet."

They went home the next day, and Lexa retreated to her room as soon as the car was unloaded and everything was put away, even though her father wasn't in evidence. His car was in the driveway, which meant that he was here somewhere, and she clearly wasn't going to take the risk of running into him if she could avoid it. Anya didn't try to stop her, even though it had really started to rub her the wrong way that Lexa obviously seemed to feel like she couldn't actually _live_ in her own home. It wasn't healthy. But she needed to talk to Lexa's father, so for now it suited her fine to have Lexa safely out of the way.

"I have an idea," she said, when he came out to make himself a sandwich. 

She saw him stiffen, like she'd startled him but he didn't want to show it. How he had walked right past her without seeing her she had no idea; she assumed he must be caught up in his own thoughts, which were undoubtedly about work and other things that were far more important to him than his daughter.

Except she didn't actually believe that he cared as little as he sometimes seemed to, or as little as Lexa believed. She actually thought that he cared a great deal, but that it mostly came out in unfortunate ways. Like he saw that Lexa needed structure and direction, so his solution was to have her enlist. 

"About what?" he asked. 

"Lexa. Next semester."

"She's going back to school," he said. "End of story."

She clenched her jaw, her teeth grinding. "She doesn't want to go back to a school where every single thing that she sees, every single person that she encounters, is going to remind her of what she's lost," she said. "I don't blame her for that, and neither should you." _What did you do when your wife died? You got the first plane you could out of Hawaii, and you've never been back._ But she couldn't say that. Going on the offensive was not the right strategy here. She needed to win him over to her side, which meant making a calm, rational argument, and refuting any counterargument he might have. 

"I understand your concern about her taking a semester off," she continued when he said nothing. "With how she reacted to things earlier this summer, having her in a situation where she doesn't have a schedule to follow, doesn't have any kind of structure to her life, it could end up being a very bad situation. So that's not the route that we want to go. She doesn't want to enlist, and I don't think that that's a good option for her either. Pushing her a little is good. She needs that. Pushing her to a breaking point isn't. Because she will. As strong as she is, as resilient... it would break her. And do you really want to be the father of the girl who was broken by basic?" 

She saw a muscle in his jaw twitch, but still he said nothing. "Transferring schools is pretty much out of the question without her taking a semester off, because all of the deadlines have passed. So that's not really an option either."

"You said you had an idea," he finally grumbled. "What is it?"

"A semester abroad," Anya said. "It's... it might not be possible. All of the deadlines for that have almost certainly passed as well. _But._ My mother actually knows someone who works in that office, and I think maybe if we can present her with all of the extenuating circumstances in this situation, and we're maybe a little bit flexible about where Lexa goes... we might be able to make it happen."

"What do you mean, flexible about where she goes?" he asked.

"I mean that we're obviously going to be limited to places that still have openings in their programs, and are willing to take enrollment of a student on such short notice," Anya said. "I asked her where she would go if she could go anywhere, and she said Australia. Which might work in our favor, because there's a chance that we may have a partnership with more than one university there, given how big it is. So that's going to be the goal, but if that's not possible, we'll have to look at what countries are available, and make a decision from there."

"Does she know you're doing this?" he asked. 

"Not yet," Anya said. "I don't want to get her hopes up if it doesn't work out. I would rather just tell her that it's a done deal, if it can be."

"What if she doesn't want to?"

"She doesn't _want_ to do anything," Anya said. "But I think the fact that this will allow her to get away from everything she knows, everything that might remind her... it should be a pretty persuasive argument."

"And you think she can handle being on her own, halfway around the world?"

"I think that being in a university setting will give her enough of a support system that she'll do it. She's good at rising to the occasion. If she doesn't have the option to fall apart, she won't." _I hope._ There were obviously no guarantees, and this might be the worst possible thing for her, the worst decision that they could make on her behalf, but it was also pretty much the only option that Anya could think of that might possibly still be open to them. She had to try. "We'll make sure that there are people on the staff there that are aware of her... circumstances, and hopefully they can be on the lookout for any signs that she's really starting to spiral, and if that happens, we'll figure out what we need to do to intervene at that point."

"From halfway around the world." 

Anya ground her teeth, and finally asked, "Do you have a better idea?"

He looked back at her, and for a second she thought that he was going to start harping on having her enlist again, but then he just shook his head. "See what you can do," he said. "But maybe see if there are any alternatives that don't take her quite so far away."

"It's where she wants to go," Anya said. 

"She doesn't know what she wants," Captain Woods said. "Hasn't she made that obvious?"

Anya's eyes narrowed. How could he be so oblivious? How could he live with a girl for nineteen years now... and it was only then that she realized that Lexa's birthday was coming up, was actually in the next couple of days, and she hadn't mentioned it, and neither had he, and they hadn't made any plans to do anything for it, but maybe Lexa didn't want to do anything... She pushed the thought aside to worry about later. The more immediate issue was trying to figure out how he could with Lexa, his _daughter_ , for nineteen years and have absolutely no clue who she was? And then when she's at her worst, that's when he decides that he knows something about her. It was infuriating, and she was getting sick of being caught in the middle of this. 

"It's the first time she's given me any kind of definite answer about anything," Anya said. "I asked her where she would want to go if she could go anywhere, and she said Australia. She didn't say, 'I don't know.' I didn't have to drag it out of her. I asked, and she answered. She didn't care to elaborate on the reasons behind it, but I don't need her to. I'm willing to trust her that even in the midst of all of this, she knows what she wants." 

He sighed, a rush of air from his nose, obviously annoyed but Anya was past the point of caring. Anyway, he gave in. "See what you can do," he repeated. 

"Don't sabotage me," she replied, and got up and went to go check on Lexa.

The next day she reached out to Nat, and told her what they were trying to do. Nat in turn reached out to the office that handled study abroad requests, and Anya got a phone call a little while later. The woman on the other end was an old friend of Nat's and she wasn't at all sure that they would be able to work anything out on this short notice, and was she absolutely sure that they couldn't try for spring semester instead? Anya explained the situation, explained and explained and explained, and she actually thought she heard the woman on the other end sniffling a little. "I'm not making any promises," she said, "and if I do find something, we're going to have to act _fast_. This would be so much easier if you were actually here... or I guess if she was, since she'll be the one who needs to sign all of the paperwork."

"We'll overnight everything if we have to," Anya said. "If you can scan and email the paperwork to us, we'll print it here and overnight it back with original signatures. Unless you can accept it via email back."

"We really need originals," the woman – her name was Valerie – said. "But... if you can scan and email it back and then also send the originals, I can at least get started working on things knowing they're coming."

"That's what we'll do, then," Anya said. "I can't thank you enough for doing this."

"Don't thank me yet," Valerie said. "I haven't actually done anything."

"You're trying," Anya said. "That's more than a lot of people would do."

"I owe your mom a favor," she said, "and this seems like something pretty worthy to use it on."

"You have no idea," Anya said, because even though she'd tried to explain, she wasn't sure it was actually possible to convey to someone who had never met Lexa just how dire things would be if they didn't find some way to get her out of her own head for a while. And being in a completely new, completely foreign environment would force her to do that. She wouldn't have any choice but to get her shit together and figure things out. At least that was the hope, and it was all she had.

"I'll get it all sent over right now. Is this the best number to reach you?"

"Yes."

"Great. I'll talk to you soon."

"Thanks," Andy said, and hung up. A few minutes later, she received an email with all of the forms that needed to be signed just to request a place in the study abroad program. She filled them out, and handed them to Lexa for a signature.

"What's this?" she asked, her eyebrows drawing together in a frown. She refused to take the pen that Anya held out. "What are you doing?"

Anya sighed. "I was going to wait to tell you until things were more settled, but I didn't take into account the fact that you would need to sign things. I thought of a way to make it so that you stayed in school next semester, but you don't have to actually go back to campus."

"What?"

"Study abroad. We find you somewhere else to study for a semester, and while you're there, you can make decisions about what you want to do for the spring, and have the time to apply to transfer or whatever you decide to do."

"Isn't it too late?" Lexa asked. " _She_ was looking into it, and all of the deadlines would be past by now, wouldn't they?"

"I know a guy who knows a guy," Anya said, smiling, trying to make light of it. "Except they're both women. We're trying to see if it's possible. It's the best option we've got. But you have to sign off on it. Literally."

"That's why you asked where I would go if I could go anywhere?"

Anya nodded.

Lexa looked at her for a long moment, then took the papers and the pen and scribbled her signature at the bottom. 

"Thank you," Anya said. "I'll keep you posted."

"Okay," Lexa said, but she didn't sound like she cared. It was hard to tell if she really didn't, or if she was just acting like she didn't, but Anya didn't have time to sort it out right now. She needed to get the paperwork back to Valerie so that they could get this whole process started. 

"Do you want to go with me to the post office?" Anya asked after she'd finished scanning and emailing. "We have to overnight these back."

"Okay," Lexa said, and put down the book she'd been reading and sat up. "Right now?"

Anya was so surprised by the fact that Lexa hadn't immediately said no that it took her a second to register that Lexa had asked her a question. "Yes," she said, offering a hand to pull Lexa up... and was shocked again when she actually took it. 

There was a post office right on base, and the weather wasn't actually horrifically hot that day, so they walked. They didn't talk, but it was a peaceful quiet, like the one that they'd shared around the campfire most nights when they'd been out in the woods. Was this progress? Was this a sign that Lexa was actually started to heal? Or was she just burying it all to be able to get through the day, and eventually it would all come back up and knock her flat again?

And if that happened, would it be while she was half a world away? Was this all insane? 

In the end, it was a chance that they had to take. All of them. She'd meant what she said to Lexa's father about Lexa being able to rise to the occasion. She believed that if she wanted to, she could and would function like anyone else... or at least a reasonable imitation thereof. If she was just given a chance, she would exceed expectations, because that was who she was, and what she did. Maybe her being here, taking care of her, maybe even coddling her... maybe it was holding her back.

But if she wasn't here, it would just be Lexa and her father, and even if Lexa _wanted_ to get her life back on track, she would be doing it without anyone to talk to, or spend time with. She would be completely on her own, and that wasn't, couldn't be, healthy. 

No, she needed to be here. Even if Lexa got the whole eating, sleeping, showering, getting fresh air thing under control on her own... she needed a friend. So Anya would stay. 

Once the papers were in the mail, on their way back to the east coast, they headed back. Anya looked over at her and asked, "What do you want to do for your birthday?"

Lexa actually looked surprised. "Is it?" she asked.

"Tomorrow."

"Oh." Lexa considered, then shrugged. "It's not a big deal."

"It's your birthday," Anya said. 

"It's just a day," Lexa said, "that I happened to be born on."

"Most people celebrate that," Anya pointed out. "Cake, presents... bounce castles, pony rides...?"

"I think I'm too big for a pony," Lexa said.

"Probably," Anya said. "Especially the ones they use for pony rides. But there must be _something_ that you want to do." She braced herself to be told that they'd never bothered before. At this point, it wouldn't even really surprise her to find out that Captain Woods hadn't felt the need to make a fuss about Lexa's birthday. 

"Not really," Lexa said. "It's not like there's anyone to invite to a party."

"Do you want cake? Ice cream? Ice cream cake?"

"Do we have to?"

A surge of anger rushed through her, because who the hell wanted to just ignore their birthday? Sure, maybe once you got older, but she was turning _nineteen_. She was way too young to be this jaded, this apathetic, this world-weary. 

"Yes," she said. "Yes, we have to. We have to do _something_ , because it's your fucking _birthday_ , Lexa. Maybe no one bothered to celebrate that in the past, but you've been alive for another year, and—"

"No," Lexa said. "No." She sped up, not quite running but not walking either.

"Shit." Anya hurried to catch up with her. "Lexa, I'm sorry, I didn't—"

"Fuck off, Anya," Lexa said. "If you're bored, want something to do... just go. Do it. Do whatever. You don't need my birthday as an excuse. You don't have to... you don't have to stay here. You've done your job. I'm better now, okay? Just go."

"I shouldn't have said that," Anya said. "I'm sorry."

"Just _go_."

"I don't want to go," Anya said. "Okay? I don't want to go."

She wanted to pull Lexa into her arms and hold her, to hug her and not let go for a long time, but that wasn't how things were with them, and after what had happened while they were camping, she didn't want to give Lexa any kind of mixed signals (not that she really thought that Lexa had meant it when she'd kissed her, that there had been any kind of real emotion behind it, except maybe desperation). She wanted to promise her that she would always be there, always, but it wasn't a promise she was sure that she would be able to keep. She was here _now_ , and she would continue to be here now, but beyond that... nothing was certain. 

"Let's just go home," Lexa said after a minute. "People are staring."

They weren't. No one was paying any attention to them. But Anya just nodded and started walking again, back the way they'd come, and she unlocked the door with the key she'd been given and let them in. Lexa stood there in the little entryway, looking everywhere but at Anya. "I don't care what we do," she said. "Whatever you want to do, we can do."

"Okay," Anya said. It wasn't really the answer that she wanted; she _wanted_ Lexa to actually have some desire to engage with the world, some opinion about what they should do. She wanted her to care enough about _something_. But the fact that she was willing to do _anything_ would have to be enough, at least for now. 

"I'll make lunch," Lexa said then. 

"Okay," Anya said again, trying to keep the shock from her voice. It was only the second time since she'd gotten here that Lexa had actually showed any kind of initiative when it came to food. (The first time being when she'd made breakfast while they were camping.) Every single other meal, Anya had made and set in front of her, and she'd dutifully eaten as much of it as she could, but she'd never actually helped, or offered to do it. 

While Lexa moved around the kitchen, Anya got out her laptop and began searching for things to do in the area... which turned out to be not a whole heck of a lot. She finally broadened her search area and found something that she _hoped_ Lexa would like. She filled in the online booking form, glad that Lexa's birthday fell in the middle of the week so they still had openings even on this short notice.

Lexa set a plate on the coffee table in front of her – a sandwich and potato chips and two pickles, and sat at the other end with her own plate. "I'm sorry," she said after a few seconds of awkward silence. "I don't mean to be like this."

"It's okay," Anya said, not because it always was, but because it wasn't as if Lexa could help where she was, mentally and emotionally. At least she was trying now. At least she was making an effort. So she could accept the apology, and forgive her (there really wasn't anything to forgive) and move on, because holding a grudge wouldn't do either of them any good. 

"Okay," Lexa said. She picked up her sandwich and took a bite, chewing slowly, and Anya tried not to watch her out of the corner of her eye.

"Do you want me to tell you what we're doing tomorrow, or do you want it to be a surprise?" she asked.

Lexa shrugged, then frowned and said, "Surprise me." Which surprised _Anya_ , because she knew that Lexa wasn't a big fan of uncertainty. She didn't _like_ surprises. She liked to know what was happening and when and where, and she liked to be able to plan ahead for it. Anya chose to take the fact that she was willing to allow this to be a surprise as a display of trust, and not one of extreme apathy. 

"We'll have to get up early," she said.

"We always get up early," Lexa pointed out.

"Touché."


	6. Chapter 6

The next morning, as promised, they were up almost before the sun, driving the better part of two hours to reach their destination. Lexa had barely said a word the entire time, but then Anya was still half asleep so she didn't really mind the lack of conversation. She turned onto the wide packed-dirt driveway, under the sign for the ranch that she'd found, and pulled her car into the small lot. 

Lexa got out of the car and looked around, and Anya watched it slowly dawn on her where they were and what they were likely to be doing, and she couldn't help grinning. "Behold," she said. "Pony rides."

She almost smiled. Lexa almost smiled, and Anya counted that as a victory. A minute later they were greeted by a very tan woman who might have been in her 30s or 50s, it was impossible to tell, wearing a flannel shirt and boots and a cowboy hat. She looked them up and down and nodded. "I'm Sandy," she said, offering a hand which Anya shook and Lexa didn't. "I'm gonna be your guide today. You're actually the only ones signed up until this late this afternoon, so we can take all the time we want, just about, unless you got somewhere else you gotta be later."

"No," Anya said. "Nowhere else."

"Well good then. Either of you ever ridden before?" 

"A couple of times," Anya said. "Just trail rides like this. Nothing serious. I don't know about Lexa. I'm Anya, by the way."

"Lexa," Lexa said, "and pretty much the same."

"All right, well, no experience required. Let's go out to the barn and see who strikes your fancy."

They followed Sandy, who walked down the line of stalls, offering a greeting to each horse. She patted one on the nose. "This here is my horse, Humbug. He's got a lot of personality and not the best manners." She smiled. "All of the horses along here are used for our trail rides, so they're all fine for anyone to ride, although of course they've got their own quirks. You tell me which one you like and we'll get them out and saddled up."

Anya ended up choosing a chestnut gelding named Ringo, and Lexa a dark dapple gray mare named Gona. Sandy frowned slightly when she saw the stall that Lexa had stopped in front of. "I should have said that _most_ of the horses along this row are used for our trail rides," she said. "We're still working with her. She doesn't take to too many people just yet."

But Lexa held out her hand and the horse came right to her, whuffling at her palm. Anya watched Sandy's forehead furrowed, then she went and grabbed a few treats, handing them to Lexa, who extended her hand again, and the horse took them gingerly, crunching down on them and then nudging Lexa's shoulder like she was looking for more. 

"Huh," Sandy said. "I can't say I've seen her take to someone so quickly before." She shook her head. "We've been rehabilitating her; the person who owned her before us didn't know what they were doing and didn't treat her too kindly. Trouble was the horse was smarter than the owner, really."

"Maybe she senses a kindred spirit," Anya said, too quietly for Lexa to hear, and Sandy raised an eyebrow. "Lexa's been through a lot recently," she said. "It's her birthday today, and I just wanted to get her out and _doing_ something."

"It's her birthday?" Sandy said. "Well... give me just one minute." She went to a little office at the end of the barn, and came back a few minutes later. "Let's get Ringo ready, and then we'll see about Gona. I'll want to see how your friend handles her in the ring before we take her out on the trail."

"Sure," Anya said. She hoped that it would work out, because she didn't think Lexa had so much as looked at any of the other horses once she'd seen Gona, and she didn't want her to be disappointed. 

But whatever damage the horse had didn't seem to be in evidence as Sandy got her out of the stall. Lexa stood at her head, stroking her nose, as she was saddled and her feet were checked. When they led her out into the ring and Lexa mounted, she responded perfectly to every command that Lexa gave her, only missing a beat when Lexa fumbled a cue. 

"Looks like they'll be all right," Sandy said approvingly. "I'll just go get the picnic from the main house, and we'll be on our way."

"There wasn't any mention of a picnic," Anya said. 

"Normally that's not part of the package," Sandy said, "unless you make special arrangements. But like I said, you're the only ones booked and since it's your friend's birthday, I thought we'd do something a little special."

"Thank you," Anya said. "That's... that's really nice of you."

"It doesn't ever hurt to show kindness," Sandy said. 

_You might be surprised,_ Anya thought, but of course she didn't say it. It wasn't really a fair thing to say, because how could a stranger respond to it, and she'd _chosen_ to do this. No one had asked her to. Not exactly. But she'd showed up of her own volition, and she could leave any time that she wanted to... she just would also have to accept the consequences of that decision, whatever they were. She would have to make peace with the outcome. 

And right now that outcome felt anything but certain. So she stayed, maybe as much for herself as for Lexa at this point, but it didn't matter. 

Sandy came back with a set of saddlebags that she slung over Humbug's haunches and fixed to her saddle, and then mounted up, heading out into the fields that surrounded the farm, toward a stand of trees in the distance. Lexa nudged Gona's sides, falling in behind her, and Anya rode just slightly behind her, feeling like a giant because Ringo was almost a full hand taller than the other two horses. 

They rode mostly in quiet, with just the creaking of leather and the swishing of the grass (and cicadas or whatever made that hissing, rattling noise that seemed to be a constant in the summer, and the occasional bird...). At one point Lexa reached down and patted at her hip, and then turned and looked at Anya, frowning. "You should have told me to bring my camera," she said. 

Anya wasn't prepared for the sudden sting of tears rushing to her eyes at the words. She blinked them back, and managed to keep her voice steady. "You're right," she said. "I should have. I'm sorry."

Lexa looked at her for a second longer, then shrugged. "I'll make do with my phone," she said, taking it from her pocket and somehow managing to balance on the horse, hold the reins, and take a picture at the same time. 

They rode for over an hour, finally stopping in a grassy area near a stream. They tied the horses so that they could make a meal of the grass while Sandy laid out their little picnic for them. There were sandwiches and potato salad and macaroni and cheese, and all of it was delicious. "I'm sorry that I couldn't manage cake," Sandy said. "We didn't have any. I hope you like lemon squares."

"That's perfect," Lexa said. "Even better than cake." 

Sandy smiled, and Lexa almost smiled back for the second time that day. It was the most effort she'd made to shift her face from its look of perpetual blankness all summer, and their guide seemed to understand that. "Happy birthday."

The lemon squares were huge, but Lexa ate all of hers and half of Anya's, and Anya might have complained if she hadn't been so fucking happy to see Lexa actually show interest in food. When they were done, they cleaned everything up and got back on the horses for a meandering ride back. They got a lesson in grooming horses upon their return to the stable, which Lexa lingered over until Sandy mentioned that their next group would be arriving soon. 

"Thank you," Lexa whispered, resting her forehead against Gona's neck, her hand pressed flat against her shoulder. 

Anya didn't thank her horse, but she did give him an extra treat, and then thanked Sandy for all of her hospitality. She invited them to come back any time, and Anya almost wished that they could, but she doubted they would get another chance. 

Back in the car, Lexa was quiet again, but Anya didn't think it was a bad kind of quiet. They were nearly back to the base when Lexa finally spoke up. "Thank you," she said. "For doing that."

"You're welcome," Anya said. "Happy birthday."

It wasn't until the next day that Anya asked to see the pictures that Lexa had taken. Lexa handed over her phone, and while Anya was scrolling through, a text message came in:

**I hope you are suffering for what you did.**

Anya tapped on it without thinking, and it brought her to the text history... which was message after message with different words but the same sentiment, and some worse. 

And although there was no name associated with the contact, Anya knew. There was only one person who the messages could possibly be from, and it made her want to fly across the country and get her hands around her neck and squeeze. How _dare_ she? Hadn't she done enough to ensure Lexa's misery? Was this kind of shit even _legal_?

Lexa snatched the phone back, holding it to her chest like she was afraid that Anya might destroy it... and it was tempting. Oh, was it tempting. "What the fuck do you think you're doing?"

"Give me the phone back," Anya said.

"It's _my_ phone."

"Give me the phone, Lexa." 

But Lexa didn't hand it over. She backed up, moving away from Anya, and she knew that she needed to keep her cool if she didn't want Lexa to react like a cornered animal... but she was pretty much there already, and Anya was sick of walking on eggshells around her. What Mrs. Walker was doing was _wrong_ , and she wasn't going to let it continue. 

"You can either give me the phone, or I can take it from you," Anya said. "It's up to you."

"It's _my_ fucking phone!" Lexa snapped. "I never should have let you see it. It's none of your business what's on it."

"Yeah, well, I'm _making_ it my business," Anya said. "That's harassment, and it might very well be illegal, and we should take it—"

"We're not taking it anywhere," Lexa said. "I'm not—They already hate me. They think I'm evil. I'm not going to prove them right."

"Prove them—What are you even talking about, Lexa? Turning her in to the authorities when she is basically telling you that she wishes you were dead, that you should—"

"I _know_ what she's saying," Lexa said. "Okay? It doesn't matter. She's just... if it makes her feel better, then fine. Whatever. I don't even read them anymore."

But she was lying, and it was obvious she was lying. She so rarely did that she'd never gotten good at it, and Anya could see right through her. Lexa read every single text that woman had sent her, over and over again, and she probably believed every word of it. She accepted it like penance for a crime she'd never committed, martyring herself for something she had had no power to stop, and that no amount of punishment could ever change.

"Give me the phone," Anya said. 

"You're not taking it to the police," Lexa said. "If you do, I swear I will _never_ speak to you again." 

That definitely was _not_ a lie. 

"I won't take it to the police," Anya said. "Okay. Just give me the phone."

"For what? You've already seen everything you need to see."

"And so have you," Anya said. She held out her hand expectantly, but Lexa just took another step back. Where she thought she was going to run to, Anya had no idea. Where she thought she was going to go that Anya couldn't find her was a mystery... probably to both of them. But still she refused.

Anya didn't make empty promises, and she also didn't make empty threats. When Lexa didn't give her the phone, she got up, moving quickly to catch and disarm Lexa, releasing her before she even really had a chance to struggle. She turned the phone off and shoved it in her pocket. "Now get in the car."

"Are you crazy?" Lexa asked. "I'm not getting in the car with you! You've lost you fucking mind!"

"I assure you," Anya said, "I am perfectly sane. Get in the car."

"Or what? You'll get me in the car?"

"If I have to."

Lexa crossed her arms. "I'm not going anywhere."

Anya looked at her, trying to assess how serious she was, and how far would be too far to push her. Finally she decided that the cost of this battle wouldn't be worth the victory. "Fine. Stay here then. I'm going out."

She could tell that Lexa wanted to ask where, but she just lifted her chin and kept the question clenched behind her teeth. She wasn't going to give Anya the satisfaction of showing any sign that she actually cared, about her or anything else. 

Anya grabbed her keys and left, using her phone's GPS to navigate her to the nearest shopping center. She came back an hour later and handed Lexa a phone. 

She turned it over in her hands, frowning. "This isn't my phone."

"It is now," Anya said. "I've already programmed my number into it."

"Give me back my phone," Lexa said. "I can't—I'm not taking this. Just give me back my phone."

"I'll give it back as soon as I know that the phone number has been disconnected," Anya said. "But I'm not... That shit ends today. I'm not letting her do that to you. I don't care if she's grieving, I don't care if you say you don't care. I will not let anyone speak – or text – that way to any of my friends. Ever."

Lexa looked down at the phone she held, which was an upgrade from her old one. "I hate setting up new phones," she said. "I had everything exactly where I wanted it."

"I know," Anya said. "But sometimes you need a fresh start."

Lexa looked up at her for a second like she might say something, but no words came and finally she looked away again, and began the intensely irritating process of re-downloading apps and arranging them on the screens. 

Explaining to Captain Woods that he needed to have Lexa's phone number disconnected without actually telling him _why_ proved to be a little bit tricky, but he finally gave in when Anya told him that the new phone was already bought and paid for, and linked to Anya's plan. She made some excuses about better international coverage, blah blah blah, and eventually he just gave in and made the call to his carrier to have it removed. 

"You shouldn't be paying for her phone," he said. "She's not your responsibility."

Anya thought she showed great restraint in not laughing in his face at that, given the fact that at the beginning of the summer he had basically told her the exact opposite, and she'd been the one taking care of Lexa ever since. "You can pay me back," she said, "if you really feel the need."

"I do," he said, and Anya just said thank you when he handed her the money, because really, it wasn't something that she'd really had the funds to cover out-of-pocket, but she would have found a way because it was necessary. 

"We'll figure out how to handle the monthly bill," she said, and he nodded. 

The next morning Anya gave Lexa back her phone, but kept hold of it when Lexa reached for it, their hands not quite touching. "Promise me that you won't try to get the number turned back on," she said. "We're done with that."

" _We_?" Lexa asked.

"You, then, but it's done. It's over. I'm giving you your phone back because I know that there are things on there that are important to you, but please, _please_ don't give that woman another chance to tear you apart."

Lexa looked at her, long and hard, and then nodded, and Anya released her grip on the phone. Lexa immediately shoved it in her pocket without even turning it on. Anya wished she'd deleted the text messages from Mrs. Walker, but as much as she hated that they existed in the first place, they were Lexa's to decide what to do with. Maybe she would change her mind about going to the authorities with them. Maybe she would erase them on her own. Whatever she decided, Anya needed to give her the space to make it herself.

A few days later Anya got a call from Valerie. "Good news," she said. "One of the programs in Sydney had someone drop out unexpectedly, so they have an opening."

"Are you serious?" Anya asked. "What do we need to do?"

"I'll email you the form, and you just need to sign it – or Lexa needs to sign it, really – confirming that she will take the spot, scan and email it back to me, mail the original, and we'll take it from there. When you mail it back, you'll also need to put down the deposit, which at this point... it's not so much a deposit as the tuition bill, or most of it. Once that's set, we'll get her registered for classes, sort out housing, and she'll be good to go."

"Wow," Anya said. "Thank you so much for your help."

"Of course," Valerie said. "Just check your email in fifteen minutes or so."

"I will."

"Great. Have a good day."

"You too." After she hung up, she just sat there for a minute as it sunk in that this was really happening. She'd made it happen... and now Lexa would spend the next semester pretty much as far away as it was possible to go and still be in an inhabited part of the world. There would be no getting to her quickly if she needed something. There would be no stopping her if— She shut the thought down before it could take hold. 

"Who was that?" Lexa asked.

"Valerie. The one who's been working on finding you somewhere to study abroad."

"Oh." Lexa frowned. "It sounded like..."

"She found a place," Anya said. "In Sydney. Someone dropped out unexpectedly, so they have an opening. She's sending us the forms that you need to sign."

"So it's happening."

"Looks like it."

"I didn't think it would," Lexa said. "I thought it would be another no, and another fight, and..." She shrugged. "I didn't think it would actually happen."

Anya got up and went to sit next to her, resting a hand on her back. "You okay?"

"Fine," Lexa said, sitting up straighter to try and escape the touch, so Anya moved her hand away. "It's just... a lot. But it's good. I need to get the hell away from here anyway."

"It won't be right away," Anya pointed out. "But soon." Too soon, maybe, but she wasn't sure if it was too soon for Lexa, or just for her. The idea of _not_ waking up every morning and making breakfast for both of them, of living somewhere and not only having her own room, but not even having anyone else around to look after... It felt weird. She'd been thrilled when she'd gotten a single in the dorms, but now...

She would be fine. She would have to be. And so would Lexa. She had put this into motion, and now she had to see it through. 

After that, everything seemed to happen too quickly. The paperwork was signed and mailed, along with a check to cover most of the cost (and she admired the fact that Captain Woods didn't even blink when she told him how much the check needed to be for, even though she was pretty sure he was cringing on the inside), and then she was looking through a catalog of classes with Lexa, figuring out what she could take that would fill gen ed requirements, and that would also fit with her major, and that would also interest her... or at least that fit two of the three, and watching her have a meltdown when she started to go through her stuff to pack and everything reminded her of Costia (although of course she didn't _say_ that that was why she suddenly couldn't bear the sight of a large portion of her wardrobe) and so she ended up with bags of stuff that they dropped off at Goodwill on their way to the shopping center to get her new things (another bill that Anya was glad she didn't have to pay). Tickets were booked and bags were packed and soon it was the night before and Anya just sat there looking at her, wondering if this was really the right decision, and knowing that there was no going back even if it wasn't. 

She watched Lexa as she fastened her last bag shut, not knowing what to say to her... or not knowing how to say what she wanted to say without it coming out maudlin and over-emotional. How did you tell someone that you were going to miss them, that you cared about them maybe more than you'd ever cared about anyone else, that you weren't sure how you were going to sleep without the sound of their breathing nearby? How did you let them know that you were still worried about them, scared to death that they wouldn't be able to handle being on their own and that they would fall into some dark spiral and never come out, and that you would blame yourself for not being there? How did you say 'I love you' without using those words?

And why couldn't she just use those words? Why were they so hard to say? 

Because society had conditioned them to think that they were sacred, that they were only to be exchanged with those who were nearest and dearest to you, those who had given you life or that you planned to spend the rest of your life with. That love was and had to be forever or you were doing it wrong. 

But wasn't Lexa nearest and dearest? What had this summer been, if not the forging of a bond between them that would be... if not impossible, very, very hard to break, even when stretched across oceans and continents and time zones? And yet the words stuck in the back of her throat and wouldn't come out, and they went to bed without saying anything, and neither of them slept.

In the middle of the night, she heard Lexa get up. She cracked open her eyes, expecting that she needed to go to the bathroom or get a drink or something, but no. Lexa took a few shuffling steps that led her to the side of Anya's bed and just stood there. Anya finally lifted the corner of her blanket and slid over even though there really wasn't room for two, and after a second's hesitation, Lexa crawled under it, settling herself a little awkwardly in the narrow space on the mattress.

"Hey," Anya said. 

"Hey."

"Can't sleep?" Lexa shook her head and Anya felt it, because they were sharing the same pillow, their faces so close their noses almost brushed. A wave of cold slid through Anya as she wondered if Lexa was going to try to kiss her again... and she actually questioned what she would do if she did. It wasn't like that between them, and it never would be. But tomorrow they would be a world away from each other, and who knew what would happen then? It could be that all they had left was tonight. 

But Lexa didn't kiss her, and finally Anya said, unnecessarily, "Me either."

They laid in silence, and Anya closed her eyes for a while, and when she opened them she could see silvery tracks streaking Lexa's cheeks, and was this the first time she'd seen her cry? Not ever, but this summer? Had Lexa ever actually cried over Costia? Not that she could remember. Not that Lexa had let her see. 

"Shh," she whispered, wiping the tears away with her thumbs. "It's okay, Lexa. You'll be okay." But the tears didn't stop. She wasn't sobbing. She was hardly making any sound at all, save the occasional hitch in her breath, but the tears just kept flowing. "I'll call you," Anya said, "and you can call me. Any time. It doesn't matter about the time zones. If you need me, you call me. Okay?"

Lexa nodded, and Anya wrapped her arms around her and pulled her close, and she wanted to say it, those three stupid fucking words, but they wouldn't come out. "You'll be okay," she told her instead. _We both will. We have to be._

Eventually they slept, but fitfully, and the alarm went off far too early. Lexa had gotten up sometime in the night and gone back to her own bed, and Anya was glad to be spared any potential awkwardness that waking up together might have led to, but at the same time, it might have been nice to hold on to that closeness for just a little longer before she went to a place where she would be, at least physically, unreachable for the next four months.

"Are we running?" Lexa asked.

"Do you want to?"

"I'm about to spend most of a day on a plane."

Anya cocked her head. "I'm not sure if that's a yes or a no," she said.

"Neither am I," Lexa admitted. 

In the end, they got up and ran, because it was part of their routine, and because it would be the last time for a while, and because they had the time to do it and nothing else to fill that time. When they got back to the house, Anya showered first, and then made breakfast while Lexa was getting ready. Instead of setting her food on the kitchen table like she normally did, she put it on the coffee table. "Sit," she said. 

Lexa looked at her for a long moment, and Anya thought she saw it register what she was doing, and why she was doing it. For a second she thought that Lexa would resist, or refuse, but then she just sat, and Anya took her place on the couch behind her and combed out her hair while she ate, braiding it back so that it wouldn't tangle or get in her face during her long hours on the plane. When she was finished, she leaned forward and planted a kiss on the top of Lexa's head, then turned her head to rest her cheek there for a moment before letting go.

They loaded their luggage into the car. Anya would be leaving to start driving home straight from the airport. There was no reason to stay here once Lexa was gone, after all. "Are you going to say goodbye to your father?" Anya asked. 

"No," Lexa said. "Let's just go."

But Captain Woods came out the door before they could actually leave. He came over to where Lexa was standing, and Anya walked a few steps away to not overhear what was being said. She hoped that he could avoid triggering any landmines that she would have to try to clear the shrapnel from on the drive. When Lexa got in the car, she was stone-faced, but at least she didn't seem to be actively upset. 

At the airport they got Lexa's luggage checked, and then stopped as they approached the security lines. Once Lexa stepped into one, there was no turning back. Once she went through to the other side, the only way they would see each other until December would be through the wonders of technology.

"Remember what I said," Anya told her. 

"I remember."

"Any time, no matter what."

"I know."

"Okay." She looked at Lexa, and then did what neither of them were very good at doing, and reached out. She took her face between her hands for a second, then let them drop to her shoulders. "You can do this."

Lexa nodded, just the faintest dip of her chin and lowering of her eyes. 

Anya didn't know what else to say, so in the end, she didn't say anything at all. She just let her go, and stood and watched as Lexa turned her back and got into one of the lines. She stood there, waiting, until Lexa had gone through the metal detector and disappeared. 

She never looked back.

Maybe that was a good thing.

She went back to her car and programmed the GPS to take her through the labyrinthine roads from the parking garage back to the real world. But as she looked at the line drawn across most of the country, the path from here to home, something inside of her cracked, and she leaned her arms on the steering wheel, rested her forehead against them, and cried. 

She cried for Costia who would never have a future and for Captain Woods who had thrown away so much time with his daughter. She cried for Lexa, who was brokenhearted and brave in the face of it anyway, and for herself, too, because she'd given up her entire summer to be there to pick up the pieces of a shattered friend, and now that was over. She'd figured out Lexa's future, or at least the next few months of it...

Now it was time to figure out her own.


End file.
